


Dee Gives Birth

by gayvincreel



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Bad Parenting, Breastfeeding, Canon-Typical Awfulness, Dee Gives Birth, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, POV Multiple, Parenthood, Sharing a Bed, The Waitress Gets A Name
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-30
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2019-04-30 10:40:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 55,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14495148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gayvincreel/pseuds/gayvincreel
Summary: "I can't believe that's she's real." Mac's voice is soft as well. This entire situation is completely out of control.Dee hums in agreement. "Isn't she beautiful?"All five in the room stare for another long, quiet moment at the baby, their weird, goofy grins faltering and faltering until -"Dee, I hate to be the one to say it, but your baby is pretty ugly," Dennis says.Her head immediately snaps up to glare at him. "Oh, really, you hate to be the one to say it, you hate to be -"Charlie scratches his chin. "It kind of looks like a prune? Face all wrinkled and shit.""Yeah, and why's it got a hat on?" Frank says."Oh, it's to keep it's tiny little head warm," Dee says, reaching up to stroke its head with a single, gentle finger.***Dee gives birth, but keeps the baby, and they all remain just as terrible as they were before.Recent chapter: The Gang Leaves Jersey Shore.





	1. Mac Has A Kid

“Can we – is she – is the baby – where is she –”

They clamour like hungry children at mealtime, all yelling and screeching and demanding, because this is the third time in as many goddamn hours that the same nurse has walked down that hallway to give them an update without saying they can see her and it’s getting real boring real fast. Dilated, second stage, third stage, Mac doesn’t know what any of it means and he certainly doesn’t care. He just wants to see the baby – as does everyone else, clearly, from the amount of noise they’re making. They still don’t even know who the dad is, for God's sake.

“Miss. Reynolds says she’s ready to accept visitors – now hold up just a second.” The nurse holds up a hand to hold them back before any of them can swarm down the hall. Mac heaves a sigh as Charlie makes a particularly tangled noise of frustration. “It’s family only, so all of y’all can head off home ‘til Miss. Reynolds says otherwise –”

“I’m family, I’m family,” Dennis says, pushing past Mac – you know, like a dick. The clamour begins once again from the crowd of ex-lovers behind them. “Can I go in?”

The nurse looks down at her chart. “You Dennis or Charlie?”

“Dennis, Dennis Reynolds, I’m Dee’s brother.”

There are a lot of incredibly not-cool things about having the same friends since high school. 1) they remember what you were like when you were fourteen and needed to masturbate every five seconds, 2) it’s pretty hard to make new friends when your high school buddy will never ever think they’re good enough for you, 3) they know you better than you know yourself, which isn’t always a good thing. Except when it is, in which case, it’s awesome. That’s definitely the best thing about him and Dennis; sometimes, they can read minds. Sometimes, they can just give each other one glance and they know exactly what the other one is thinking.

Dennis blinks.

“Wait, why Charlie?”

“That’s exactly what I was going to say! Hey, buddy –”

Mac turns to Charlie, who has grown very, very pale. Not so much that he looks like he’s going chuck up his guts all over the hospital floor, which is a good sign. But even he isn’t dumb enough to not pick up the implication of why Dee wants him in the room with her and her baby. With her, a woman who Charlie may or may not have had sex with nine months ago, and her new-born of the unknown parentage.

“Says here you’re her adopted brother," the nurse says.

“Wait, what?” Mac splutters. How can Dee have adopted Charlie as her brother but not him? She’s known him just as long, and he is way cooler than Charlie is, and would make a way better uncle – but the nurse steamrolls over him as if he isn’t even there.

“And you must be Frank, Miss. Reynolds’ legal father?”

Frank shrugs. “I mean, I guess.”

The nurse raises her eyebrows. Finally, a new facial expression. She’d kept with ‘I’m so incredibly bored and done with this whole situation, I wish I was at home watching _Parks & Rec_” the entire time, it was getting kind of weird. “You guess?”

“Yeah, I guess!” Frank replies, voice just a touch louder in that way he does when being pressed for any kind of information he doesn’t want to give. Why is this lady asking so many questions, anyway? Can’t she just let them all in to see the baby? Does she not understand the concept of a _gang_?

“Sir, if you’re not sure whether you’re the father of Miss. Reynolds, legal or otherwise,” the nurse says, “I won’t be able to let you in to see her.”

“Oh.” Frank blinks behind his glasses a couple times. Huh. He looked a bit like an owl when he did that. A fat, neckless owl – so, pretty much a normal owl, except without the feathers. “Then, yes, I am. I’m Frank Reynolds’, Deandra’s legal father, and this is my biological son, Charlie.”

“Four years?” Of course, when Charlie breaks out of his blue screen of death, he has to be screeching. Of course he does. “Four years and you finally admit it?”

Frank turns to him with an indignant splutter. “Well, I didn’t know that she was gonna go ahead and get herself knocked up, did I?”

Mac kind of wants to turn to Dennis and say, _well, this is pretty entertaining_ , or, _this doesn’t exactly come as a surprise_ , or, or – something stupid, but Dennis has his eyes firmly fixed down the hall. Mac gets that. Or, he tries to. He’s gotten used to them two over the years – well, more like decades, at this point – but sibling dynamics still seem so weird to him.

“No, but you could’ve at least –”

Also, Charlie has reached maximum levels of screeching, which is never easy to speak over.

“Gentleman, please! One person at a time!”

Huh. Seems like the nurse can manage it. Why is he getting so worked up, anyway? He’s on the list. Dee’s tricked the stupid hospital into thinking Charlie’s related to her, even if only by marriage, to get him into the room to see the baby. What if Mac wants to see the baby? Mac’s known her for the same amount of time, and he likes babies. Sort of. He isn’t sure when the last time he held a baby, but he’s pretty sure he could come to like a baby if it’s related to Dennis.

 “Shut up, Charlie,” Dennis snaps. “The quicker you pipe down, the quicker I get to see my sister.”

“Sorry, sorry, it’s just that this is all very stressful, what with the –”

“Stressful?” Dennis’ voice hitches up a notch. “You think this is stressful? I’ve just become an uncle to an innocent creature whose mother is the most irresponsible person in the solar system, at this point. Now, that’s stressful!”

“Oh, yeah?” Frank says, butting into the argument for no goddamn good reason. “Who d’you think is going to be paying for that bastard’s upbringing? I’ve already done it twice for you two idiots but, oh, no, guess what –”

“At least you two get to go in and see her!” Mac says, before Charlie can screech anything and escalate the entire thing. “I’ve gotta stand out here with the nutcases until she gets her fat ass down here to show us the stupid thing.”

“Wait, now, hold on,” the nurse says and, damn, Mac had almost forgotten she was even there. “You wouldn’t happen to be one Mr. Ronald McDonald, would you?”

No. 4) of incredibly not-cool reasons to have the same friends since high school is that they still remember your full real name which is so goddamn embarrassing it does, in fact, make you want to crawl up under a rock somewhere until all trace of that name has disappeared from the face of the earth.

Frank makes a very unowlish snort.

“Urgh, yes, yes, that’s me. God, couldn’t she’ve at least said Mac? Like, come on.”

Charlie has clearly recovered from his blue screen of death well enough as he is snickering loud and open. Spurts of laughter are breaking out from behind them as people add two and two and realize that’s _him_ , no thanks to Cricket, the asshole. Even Dennis has torn his eyes away from the hallway to smirk at him.

“Well, congratulations, Mr. McDonald,” the nurse continues. “You’ve just become a daddy.”

So, Mac doesn’t consider his brain much. Well, like, he does, of course he does, everyone does, but not often. Not well. He knows he’s got nerves and stuff all up in the mush of his brain keeping it going, keeping it chugging along. He’s not stupid – and sometimes, when he drinks a lot or works out a ton, it starts chugging a bit too fast or a bit weird. He knows that. Like a train, maybe. Like his brain was made entirely up of lots of little train tracks, and his trains of thought chug along and sometimes stop at a station called hungry, or horny, or bored. Except now, there are no stations. There are no thoughts. Just the power surge along the lines spiking so high that everything just kind of stops.

Daddy.

He has a _kid_.

The trains start chugging, one by one. Mac, holding his baby in his arms. Mac, teaching his kid how to walk. Mac, playing ball, watching TV, going to church, cracking jokes, being a father with his son.

Shit.

He needs to call his _mom_.

“Daddy,” he says, and he’s smiling. He’s smiling so much it hurts, and the other three are looking at him with the weirdest expressions so he must be crying a bit, too. Fuck, that’s bad, that’s bad, Mac, what are you doing – except, fuck that, these are manly tears of fatherly joy, fuck them guys. Mac wants to see his boy. “I’m a daddy.”

“Mhm,” the nurse says. “And there’s a beautiful baby girl waiting down the hallway for you.”

The trains screech to a halt.

“Oh, I was kind of hoping it’d be a boy,” Mac says, deflating. Baby girls are way less cool than baby boys.

“I have a niece?”

Dennis, on the other hand, seems to have wind beneath his wings with the way he springs down the hallway. Actually, Mac thinks, tilting his head to the side to watch him go, it’s more like he storms. The wind beneath his hurricane? Maybe something to do with that Thor thing he was going on about. Frank, however, hot on his heels, definitely waddles, none the less enthusiastic.

There’s a familiar prickle up his neck. Mac turns his head, and there’s Charlie, looking at him with narrowed eyes. Not angry eyes, Charlie could never be angry at him for too long. Suspicious isn’t the right word, either, just – puzzling. Studying. Trying to work him out, like he’s some fascinating aliens species from another world.

“What, dude?”

In essence, how Charlie looks at him at least once a week, if not per day.

“I can’t believe she fucked you, dude, that’s awesome,” Charlie says, before hurrying down the hall after Dennis and Frank.

 _Huh_ , Mac thinks, _I guess she must have_ , before he moves to follow him. The ‘I had sex with Dee Reynolds’ station is not one the trains want to stop at, no matter how drunk he was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tbh I would've never have wanted this to happen in the show but it's fun to fantasise about


	2. The Gang Meets The Baby

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dennis POV

Baby, baby, baby, baby - push past a patient, stupid patient, can't they see he has places to go? - hospital door, get it out of the way, god Dennis hates hospitals - and he's entering the room as quickly as he can without seeming like a complete idiot until he sees -  
  
He sees.  
  
Oh, god, he _sees._  
  
"Dee, seriously?" he snaps. "We've been out there for three hours waiting on your ass, could you not have put some clothes on?"  
  
Dee looks up from her naked, oh so very naked chest to give him a glare that is as familiar as it is annoyed. "The baby needs skin-to-skin contact!"  
  
"Yeah, but d'you need to have both your titties out to do it?" Dennis replies, squeezing his eyes shut as Frank runs into him in his rush to get in the room. "God, could you look where you're going, Frank? Please?"  
  
"Wait, your sister has her titties out?" he says. "Never mind, I'll come back later."  
  
"Oh, gross," he can hear Charlie say down the hall, followed quickly by a, "Yeah, Dee, that's so not cool," from Mac.  
  
"Oh, come on." There's a sound of rustling blankets and the stomp of even more feet and, man, this room does not smell good. "Fine. Fine! I've put the girls away. Better?"  
  
"Much better," Dennis says, opening his eyes to significantly less of his sister's breasts.  
  
"Aw," Charlie says, somehow in the room, now, too. "I was kind of hoping - "  
  
"Really, Charlie?" Dee's eyebrows have made all her little forehead wrinkles one big, even uglier wrinkle from how high she's raised them. "Really?"  
  
"Charlie, that's my sister!"  
  
"I know! She's Dee and, you know, she's gross and whatever, but I don't often get to see," Charlie's voice catches in his throat, and he makes a gesture like they're still in eight grade. "So, I thought - "  
  
"You reaaaaally don't wanna see them right now, this thing has gone to town on them - "  
  
"I don't care what you thought," Dennis says. "Still my sister, still gross - oh, and, on that note - still haven't forgiven you for banging my sister. Mac. Mac? You in there, buddy?"  
  
Mac, who has not said a single word since he entered the room, stays silent, his eyes completely transfixed on the bed. He's got an incredibly weird smile on his face, a big goofy grin almost like he's high or something. When Dennis turns his gaze back to his sister, he can almost see why.  
  
On the bed, lying on Dee's thankfully now-covered chest, is the tiniest human Dennis has ever seen in his entire life.  
  
"Is that her?" His voice is soft. Why is his voice so soft? What has this thing done to him?  
  
"Yeah, that's her, alright," Dee replies, glancing back down at her kid with something like pride in her eyes. Pride in herself, of course, for managing to deliver the damn thing. "Hey, guys," her voice raises a a notch, "Look what I made!"  
  
"Look what you made!" Charlie springs into motion, arms raising and waving, hands fidgeting and gripping his hair. "Oh, my god, that thing was inside of you - like, literally inside of you, for nine months - and then you, like, you pushed it out of you? Fighting for air and for life, like that scene in Alien - and you did that! That's so cool, Dee."  
  
"Yeah, Dee, you managed to do something billions of women have done before you, and you even had a nice comfy hospital room to do it in," Frank says. "Congratulations."  
  
"Shut up, Frank," Dee says, but the little grin stays fixed on her face.  
  
"I can't believe that's she's real." Mac's voice is soft as well. This entire situation is out of the control.  
  
Dee hums in agreement. "Isn't she beautiful?"  
  
All five in the room stare for another long, quiet moment at the baby, weird goofy grins faltering and faltering until -  
  
"Dee, I hate to be the one to say it, but your baby is pretty ugly," Dennis says.  
  
Her head immediately snaps up to glare at him. "Oh, really, you hate to be the one to say it, you _hate_ to be -"

Charlie scratches his chin. "It kind of looks like a prune? Face all wrinkled and shit."  
  
"Yeah, and why's it got a hat on?" Frank says.  
  
"Oh, it's to keep it's tiny little head warm," Dee says, reaching up to stroke its head with a single, gentle finger. It's a tiny hat, striped pink, as adorable as it is stupid.

"Yeah, no offence, Dee, but, uh," that's Mac now, "Couldn't you have given birth to a slightly nicer looking baby?"  
  
Dee continues stroking the baby's head for a moment, then pushes her own head back on her bird neck to look at it properly. "You're right, it is pretty ugly."  
  
"I know, right?" Charlie says.  
  
"And with your genes, it's not gonna get much prettier," Dennis adds.  
  
"I have the same genes as you, asshole!"  
  
"I'm just saying!" Dennis says. "I mean, they say the same things with dogs, right? If there's something wrong with the bitch, there's gotta be something wrong with the pup."

"Don't compare my baby to a dog!" Mac says.   
  
Charlie looks at Frank, who shrugs and makes a distinctive "I dunno" noise  
  
"Oh, my god, I can't believe I let any of you in here - alright, which one of you losers wants to hold her first? Cause I'm getting sick of this. Nuh-uh-uh," she adds as they all rush forward. "See that little dispenser on the wall behind you? You better get using it, cause I'm not letting a single one of you lay your gross hands on this thing before washing 'em first."  
  
"Oh, come on, Dee - "  
  
"Charlie, I know for a fact that you've scratched your balls sometime in the last five minutes."  
  
They all stare at him expectantly. Charlie shuffles his feet on the floor for a moment before saying, "Okay, fine, I'll wash my hands."  
  
Mac gets there the first by far, and there's a bit of a squabble over who can squeeze it out the quickest and who can rub it into their hands the fastest until Mac - the traitor - is standing next to the bed, arms outstretched.  
  
"Alright," Dee says, dragging the word out as she gently scoops the sleeping baby into her arms. "So, what you got to do is, put one of your hands under her head, other under her butt. And, _then,_ once you've got a good hold, you can-"  
  
"Oh god, oh god, oh god," Mac says as he follows her instructions. "I'm gonna drop it, I'm gonna drop it."  
  
"No, you're not, don't be stupid," Dee says. "You just kinda scoop her up. There you go!"  
  
"Oh, my god," Charlie says. "Mac's holding the baby, Mac's holding the baby!"  
  
"I'm holding a baby!" Mac says, and Dennis has no idea how he's able to look so terrified and ecstatic at the same time.  
  
"Now, with your hand on her tiny baby butt, you can just kinda slide your hand up to support her neck," Dee continues.  "Then just, kind of, put her head in your elbow bit? Yeah, like that. Place your other hand back on her butt and hey, presto."  
  
"Damn, Dee, how do you know so much about this?" Charlie says.  
  
"Oh, nurses told me," she says flippantly. "Be careful around the head, though, there's all these soft bits."  
  
Mac's face snaps instantly from terrified and ecstatic to just terrified. "Oh - oh god, Dennis, there are all these weird soft bits, why are there weird soft bits?"  
  
"I don't know, dude, it's not my baby!" Dennis says, and Mac makes a strangled noise.  
  
"Well, it's gotta get out of there somehow," Dee says, waving at her nether regions as she pushes herself upright. "Helps if its got a soft head, hurts bad enough as it is."  
  
"Oh, gross, Dee, we didn't need to know that," Charlie says.  
  
"It's just the way of nature, Charlie," she replies, swinging her bare legs over the side of the bed with a wince. "Just the way of nature."  
  
"Wait, what are you doing?" Dennis says. "You're out of bed, why are you out of bed?"  
  
Dee, now fully upright in her hospital gown, gives him a confused look. "I'm going to take a shower."  
  
"You can't -" Dennis glances around the room at the others, all equally alarmed. "You can't do that, the baby needs you."  
  
"Oh, she'll be fine," Dee says, moving slowly towards the only other door in the room. "I just fed her, I'm sure she'll be fine with four grown adults in the room to watch over her. That's the only reason I got you in here, anyway."  
  
"Oh, thanks, Dee, that makes us feel real special," Frank says. 

"Yeah, we'll be fine, won't we, baby?" Mac says, rocking the thing very gently in his arms. "Your daddy's here to protect you. Nothing is gonna happen to you while he's around."  
  
"Oh, you're welcome," she tells Frank. "And Mac?"  
  
Mac looks up from the baby with an inquisitive noise.  
  
"You're not the father. I lied to the nurse to get you into the hospital room. See you in ten!"  
  
With a sunny grin, Dee disappears, the door closing behind her with a loud click.  
  
" _Goddammit_."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is,,, surprisingly fun to write


	3. The Gang Keeps Quiet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for canon-typical jokes about Dee/Dennis

"Great," Dennis says. "This is just great. Now we have a three hour old baby who still doesn't have a father, only a mother who has just completely abandoned it to go shave her legs."  
  
Charlie glances past him at the closed bathroom door. That was a pretty loud click, did she lock it behind her? He doesn't know much about childbirth, but he isn't stupid. Even he gets dizzy in the shower if he hasn't eat and hasn't slept, whether or not he's just ran a marathon or whatever the equivalent of pushing a baby out his balls would be.  
  
"D'you think I should go down the hall and tell the guys they might still have a chance?" Frank says.  
  
"Hell no. We've got too many father figures in the mix as it is," Dennis says. "Besides, Mac, Charlie, and I said we were gonna be the baby's dads."  
  
"What am I gonna be, then?" Frank says.  
  
"You're gonna be the inappropriate grandpa, duh," Charlie says. "I mean, come on, Frank. You're way too old to be the dad of a newborn."  
  
They discussed that, right? He's pretty sure they discussed that. He isn't exactly sure of the roles grandparents play in babies lives, though. His mom's folks pretty much disowned her from the get-go, and his grandparents on the other side are a kettle of fish he does not want to touch with a ten-yard pole, so he's never really had any. Dee and Dennis generally make it sound like grandparents are just old people who take you old cool trips, make racist jokes, and give you money at Christmas. Sounds like Frank to Charlie.  
  
Frank points a stubby finger at him. "I hear what you're implying and I don't like it."  
  
"What, that you're an old, old, _old_ wrinkly man, or that you're an old wrinkly man who can't get it up?" Dennis asks.  
  
"Can we please not talk about Frank's boners in front of the baby, please?" Mac says, nose wrinkling. "Or in front of me, for that matter?"  
  
"It's a baby," Dennis says. "It can't understand you. It can barely even see you right now."  
  
"I want to set a good example," Mac replies, his firm tone kind of undermined by the infant in his arms.  
  
"Good example? Mac, with Dee as a mother, Frank as it's pop-pop, and the both of you being present in its life, at all, in any way, this baby was screwed from the moment whoever's sperm wiggled across the Rubicon and into Dee's uterus -"  
  
"Rubicon?" Frank muttered.  
  
Charlie racked his brain. "I think it's a soda brand?"  
  
" - instead of into a sock, like a normal person would've done when faced with two options: masturbating, or having sex with my sister," Dennis finishes.  
  
"It's a Caesar thing," Mac tells them.  
  
"Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah," Frank says as Charlie replies, "I am getting kind of hungry."  
  
Dennis looks from one to the other to the other. He does spare the baby a glance, though; not as if it could contribute to the conversation in anyway, being asleep and about three hours old. "Are any of you listening to me?"  
  
"I, personally, am far too hooked on how cute this baby is to care for a second about a single thing any of you guys are saying." The little smile is back on Mac's face. "I mean, look. It's barely as long as my forearm. Now _that's_ worth paying attention to."  
  
"It's not even your kid, why do you care?" Charlie said, like a man who didn't care that he hadn't gotten to hold a baby that wasn't his. Nailed it.  
  
Mac looks back down for a moment, smile slipping. This baby really is causing a rollercoaster of emotions, huh. "Yeah, I guess you're right. Hey, anyone else want this thing? I'm a lot less keen now I know it's not mine."  
  
"How do you even know it's not yours?" Dennis says.  
  
Mac furrows his eyebrows, looking between Dennis and the door like the former is an idiot and the latter is proof of that. "Because she literally just said so."  
  
"Yes, but she might be lying," Dennis presses. "Just like she lied to the nurse, just like she always, always lies!"  
  
"You're worried that you're the dad, aren't you." It's not a question.  
  
"No! No! No, I am not worried," Dennis scoffs. "No product of incest would be as pink as that. I mean, have you seen the McPoyles? And, anyway, I wouldn't bang my sister! Not even for a million dollars, especially without a condom on, so. Who knows what diseases that woman has."  
  
"What about for a billion dollars?" Mac asks, and Charlie's focus snaps from the dust particles around the ceiling light to Dennis' face.

His mouth has dropped right open. Very satisfying.  
  
"What?"

"If someone paid you a billion dollars, would you do it?" Mac repeats.  
  
"Why - why would you - why would someone even do that?" Dennis splutters. "Why would anyone ever want to pay to see that?"  
  
"I mean, some people are into some really kinky shit," Frank says.  
  
"I'm not!" Dennis says, voicing hitching an octave.  
  
"What if it was through a glory hole?" Frank asks, and,  _oh_ , this is getting good. Now that's what he likes about Frank; good topics of interrogation, any time, any place. Who knew a baby could spark such a discussion?  
  
"Yeah, like the one in the bar," Charlie says. "And you'd bang like, a couple girls, maybe three or four in a row, and one of them would be Dee but you wouldn't know which one, _and_ they paid you a billion dollars, would you do it?"  
  
"I - I don't - I mean - why, I mean, why, do you want to know this?" Dennis says. "Why are you asking me this?"  
  
"That isn't a no," Mac says with a grin.  
  
"He's right, it's not," Charlie says to Frank, who cackles.  
  
"It's a no!" Dennis says, borderline shrieking now. "It's a strong, hard no, for the love of - Mac, not ten seconds ago you were busting my balls for mentioning boners in front of the baby, and now you're having a whale of a time joking about incest! What is wrong with you people?"  
  
"There is nothing wrong with me!" Mac says. "It was a simple question, would you or would you not - "  
  
"If you're not gonna play, you're not gonna play, I don't care," Frank says. "I'm bored of this whole baby thing already."  
  
"Oh, what's wrong with us, what's wrong with us, says the guy who banged his sister," Charlie says, and it's all kind of said at the same time and they're all getting very loud and Dennis is getting very, very red.   
  
"I did _not_ \- okay, great, whatever, you're playing your stupid games, trying to get a rise outta me cause you can't go five minutes without mocking something, you're bored of the baby already," Dennis says in that whiny, condescending voice he uses almost every time he makes a list. "But what you idiots are completely failing to remember is that we have got a sleeping baby in the room so can you please! Stop! Shouting!"  
  
The room falls silent, or as silent as you can get in Hahmemann Hospital. They all hold their breath as the baby stirs, making tiny little grunting noises, before settling back down in Mac's arms and resuming its tiny baby sleep.  
  
There's a collective sigh of relief, and a delighted smile on Mac's face, as Frank says, "Well, thank god for that."  
  
As if on cue, there's the tell-tale crash of someone hitting glass, wall, and floor, very quickly and in that order, and the only warning they get is a small, screwed-up face before the baby lets loose with a full-throated wail which sends them all running for cover. At least, Charlie does, stepping behind Dennis and covering his ears as the thing screams and screams and screams. Dennis, of course, completely ignores the fact that he's supposed to be providing Charlie cover and strides to the bathroom door instead. He swings it open, then immediately swings it almost shut again, face as screwed up as his niece's.  
  
"Yeah, she fainted in the shower."  
  
"Oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god," Mac says, rocking the baby with little jerky moments.  
  
"What are you doing?" Frank says. "You can't rock her like that, you've got to do slow, smooth movements."  
  
"I don't know what I'm doing, Frank!" Mac says. "I only met her three minutes ago!"  
  
"Oh, like you have ever rocked a baby in your life," Dennis says to Frank.  
  
"Don't you think you should be in there, helping your sister?" Frank says pointedly.  
  
Dennis drops the doorknob like it's hot. "I'm not going in there!"  
  
"Well it sure as hell ain't gonna be me," Frank says, as Mac keeps rocking the screaming baby. "You're her brother and the only one here who's seen her naked who's over five foot tall."  
  
"Why the hell do I need to be over five foot to go in there?" Dennis splutters.  
  
"Gotta lug her out, don't you?" Frank says.

Dennis looks to Charlie, who shrugs; to Mac, who shakes his head as quickly as he is rocking the baby; then back to Frank, who raises his eyebrows.  
  
"Okay, fine, fine, but only because you -"  he points at them in turn, " - are physically much, much weaker than I am, you are holding the baby, and you are just incredibly weird and I'm not letting you see my sister naked."  
  
He enters the bathroom with a strangled noise, and Mac looks up from the baby with distress signals shooting out of his eyes.  
  
"Hey, Charlie," he yells over the screaming, "you wanna hold the baby for a bit?"  
  
Charlie grits his teeth together and tries very, very hard not to scream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Crossing the Rubicon is an idiom that means to pass the point of no return.
> 
> Thank u for reading!


	4. The Baby Screams Bloody Murder

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Minor warning for descriptions of blood, birth, pregnancy, and some other mildly disgusting things; also canon-typical transgender ignorance.

In the beginning, she runs the warm water between her legs. It sounds fancy, said like that: God made the heavens and the earth and Dee Reynolds, new mom, gave her battered and bruised cooch some well-deserved TLC. Did it hurt God when He made it all? Did She do the equivalent of pushing a planet out of Her Celestial Bits? Could still be He, Dee supposes, one hand on the wall to help stay upright. If Carmen can have her whole thing going, no reason why it can’t be the other way around. Probably complicates feeding a whole bunch, though, if he’s gotten his tits chopped off beforehand - and, oh, Dee doesn’t want to be thinking about that right now. Her girls hurt enough as it is without thinking of chopping them off. She is not looking forward to them swelling up like balloons over the next couple days.

Now that’s something they don’t tell you about pregnancy: how much it hurts afterwards. Beforehand? Sure, your back will ache, and your feet will swell, and you’ll need to pee every five minutes. Pregnancy itself? Worst pain you’ll ever feel, ever, in your entire life, but it’ll all go away, it’ll all have been worth it, the moment the nurse places that bundle of sticky, screaming joy on your stomach – which, eh, debatable. Afterwards it’s sleepless nights and a lot of diaper changing, but pain? What are you talking about? We’re not taking any more questions now – but, here, let’s practise swaddling again.

And it hurts. It hurts it hurts it hurts. Before, she had to pee every five minutes; now, she can’t tell when she’s not peeing and when she is. And the blood. Yep, that’s definitely blood. It’s somehow easier to deal with this time, older and more accustomed to her biology, but it still ain’t pretty. When water runs mostly clear, she clips the showerhead back on - oh, she could kiss whoever installed a detachable shower head - and turns it full heat, full power, aimed straight at the sore muscles down the length of her spine.

Ohhhh that feels so good.

No nurses. No doctors. No baby.

Just Sweet Dee and a hot jet of water. A shower room, filling with steam. All her worries, melting away.

Warm, comforting blackness.

A jet of ice cold water aimed straight at her face.

A hoarse, guttural scream, a much higher-pitched scream (a ringing falsetto which can only be Dennis), and, above all else, the nerve-jangling scream of –

Dee stops screaming. “Okay, what did you do?”

Dennis does too, thank fuck, but his reply, “What did I do? What did _I_ do?” still comes out at a pretty high pitch. “You just fainted in the shower!”

“She’s screaming like someone just dropped her!” Normally, she’d be scrabbling to shield herself but, right now, sitting on the shower room floor in a pool of her own blood with major cramps, a sore head, and a baby screaming bloody murder in the next room, she could not give less of a shit. “And, Jesus Christ, would you turn that thing off already?”

“No, she’s screaming because her mess of a mommy fell over in the shower, made a very loud noise, and scared the living daylights out of her!” Dennis yells back, but at least he turns the water off.

Dee blinks up at him under wet hair and, great. Now she has a body which is shivering violently as well as aching all over. “Then why is she still screaming?”

“Because no one in that room has tits big enough to satisfy her,” Dennis says, eyes fixed very firmly on the ceiling. “So could you please pull yourself together and shut her up?”

“Alright, alright,” Dee snaps. “I’ll do it, but you need to help me stand up.”

“ _What_?”

Dee stretches her arms out towards him, wobbly and impatient. “Come on, help me get up.”

His eyes flick down towards her, nose wrinkling in distaste. “Dee, you’re naked.”

“Yeah? So was the baby when she came out of me three hours ago,” Dee snaps. “I hit my head, my cooch feels like it’s on fire, and I can’t stand up by myself, so you gotta do it for me.” Sounds familiar. She can kind of see where the baby’s coming from as she definitely feels like screaming right now.

Dennis hovers in indecision in the eerie silence that falls between the screaming. “Alright, fine, but you owe me one.”

His hands are not gentle, but they are very deliberately placed to avoid any particularly sore regions which she can appreciate. When she’s up and out of the shower without any further incident, Dee can barely keep her eyes open for the water dripping from her hair and the screaming rattling around her aching head as she scrabbles around.

“Dee, Dee, what the hell are you doing?”

“Towel, towel, I need my towel.”

“Jesus, you’re bossy,” he grumbles.

“I’ve just given birth!”

“Oh, really? I had no idea,” Dennis replies, pressing the towel in her hands. Dee almost moans with relief, rubbing her face and hair dry so she can blink her eyes open again, gaze landing on the floor of the shower.

“Damn,” she says, wrapping the towel around herself. “That is a lot of blood.”

“Yeah, I was kind of wondering about that,” Dennis says. “Why is there so much blood? I thought the birth was uncomplicated or whatever ridiculous phrasing they used.”

“Oh, yeah, it was, but I am still kind of bleeding profusely,” Dee says. “Sort of what happens when your cooch stretches to a hundred times its normal size – about the size of a bagel – and, I mean, you’ve seen that baby’s head, right? _Way_ bigger than a bagel. Let me tell you, that hurt like a bitch, popping that one out. Still as loose as anything down there. But look what the nurse gave me!” She picks up the pads she'd left on the toilet earlier and holds them up to his face with a huge grin. “They’re self-cooling, and they feel _so_ good, I cannot tell you.”

Dennis, the man with whom she has spent almost the entirety of her thirty-five years on this planet, looks disgusted. Not only that, he looks more disgusted than she has ever seen him in their entire lives, and she’s seen him disgusted a lot. She’s seen his face every time they’ve walked into Charlie’s apartment, even a couple times when they’ve gone to Mac’s mom’s old house. She’s seen his face every time the McPoyles have swapped spit and every time Gail the Snail has been within even 50 feet of them. She’s seen him eating broccoli when they were five and trying beer when they were fifteen; she has seen her brother with vomit on his face and piss on his shoes, lying in puddles of beer on the ground; she has been a child with Dennis walking in on their parents having weird, freaky sex and she has still never seen him look more disgusted than he is now. It almost makes having the baby worth it.

Over the ceaseless screaming, there is a faint sound of three grown men singing out of key.

_"Dayman."_

“ _AaaAAAaaah_.”

Dennis’ head cocks to the side, disgust momentarily forgotten. “Are you hearing what I’m hearing?”

“ _Fighter of the Nightman_.”

“ _AaaAAAaaah.”_

Dee copies him, straining to hear over her kid’s lung capacity as she puts the pads back down. “Oh, I better not be.”

 _“Champion of the Sun!_ ”

“ _AaaAAAaah_.”

With a huff of frustration, Dennis pushes open the door to reveal Charlie, now with the baby in his arms, bouncing up and down in time with the singing as Mac and Frank, flanking him like back-up singers, swing from side to side as they warble. Dee stands and glares at them, waiting for one of them to notice her and explain why the hell they are singing the goddamn _Nightman Cometh_ to her three-hour-old baby, as the screaming subsidies, quietens, and then finally ceases.

“ _For everyone,_ ” Charlie finishes, and finally looks up at the twins standing in various stages of dampness in the doorway. He, at least, has the grace to look slightly sheepish; Frank looks unruffled, and Mac just looks relieved. “What? It was the only song we all knew.”

“In their defence, it did work,” Dennis says, just in time for the baby to start crying again.

Charlie looks like he’s on the verge of screaming himself when Dee takes the baby from him, bringing it close as she sits back down on the bed. “Alright, let me show you jerkwads how it’s done,” she says, loosening the towel around her front – “ _Dee!_ ” – and, mid-scream, just kind of shoves her entire nipple in it’s mouth.

Damn. That is never gonna not feel weird.

“Well, that’s my cue to leave,” Mac spins on his heel and calls over his shoulder as he leaves, “See yah, Dee!”

“Right behind you,” Frank says, not even bothering to say goodbye as he waddles behind him. Dennis, eyes back on the ceiling, clears his throat.

“What?” Charlie says, looking from one twin to the other. “Babies are so _weird_.”

“Could you just give us a minute?” Dennis says, at the end of every single one of his tethers. “Please?”

“Bye, baby,” Charlie says, and Dee gives him a little wave as he leaves.

“Thank you,” Dennis says, and practically collapses down on the bed next to her. They sit in relative silence, the only noise quiet breathing and a strange sucking sound.

“I hope you know how deeply annoying I find this whole baby business,” he says finally.

“Oh, I’m way ahead of you there,” Dee replies, looking down at the limpet in her arms like it’s little more than a ladybug crawling on her leg. The epidural had worn off, but something still feels frozen. “I’m so gonna regret this.”

“Yeah, well, before the weight of your stupid decision crashes into you like a wrecking ball, I’m gonna leave,” Dennis says, giving her shoulder a quick double pat before he stands. “Call me if you need me or whatever.”

“Hey, Dennis?” Dee calls. He turns to look at her with a expression that’s bordering being genuinely concerned, which is new and slightly disturbing. “Could you get me Five Guys?”

All semblance of concern is dropped and replaced with the usual scorn in the blink of an eye. “Five Guys? Why the hell do you need Five Guys?”

“I’m thinking of introducing the baby to solids,” Dee replies. “No, asshole, I’m starving, and I could so do with a bacon cheeseburger right now.”

“Oh, my god, yes, fine, but only if you promise you will not faint again,” Dennis says. “I am not lugging you out if any more showers.”

“Don’t know, don’t care, talk to me when you have food,” Dee says, dismissing him with a wave. He makes a strangled noise, and doesn’t say goodbye, but at least he shuts the door quietly behind him.

“So that’s the gang,” Dee tells the baby. “Good luck becoming a well-adjusted adult with any of them in your life.”

The baby just keeps sucking. Go figure. Dee stares at the door as if she could bore a hole in it with ennui alone.

“It’s gonna be a long 18 years.”


	5. Charlie Has An Idea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Frank POV

“So? What’s the plan?” Frank asks as soon as Dennis joins them again in the waiting room. It was only the gang now, there was no sign of any of the other guys; even Ben the soldier had buggered off after it was ‘revealed’ that Mac was the baby daddy. So much for that twist. “We going back to the bar or what?”

“Yeah, is Dee done having babies, or…” Charlie edges out.

Dennis had been in there for a real long time - or it had felt real long, with nothing for them to do but bitch at each other and get into an argument about whether Mac could kill a T-Rex with his bare hands. (He couldn’t. Not even if he gained 60 pounds of muscle could Mac be strong enough to take down that thing.) Either way, Frank was getting impatient and, frankly, pretty damn bored. He'd almost suggested bailing, but even he could admit to himself that it was a dick move to not only leave Dennis with no other option but take the bus home, but to jack his car in the meantime. No, no, they’ll wait, even if only to get an update on Dee. Frank can vaguely recall Barbara having stayed in the hospital for quite a few days after she popped the twins out – and, man, he hasn’t thought about that in years. Decades, probably.

“Yeah, I still wanna know why the hell you two were down the sewer,” Mac says. “Not only this morning, but multiple times in the past.”

“It’s fun!” Charlie says, thank god. Now that’s a man Frank could trust to be at his side - not running off, having babies, looking after his sister. A man who wants to do stupid shit as much as he does.

“Yeah, it’s like going to a waterpark, or going crabbing except instead of crabs you find –”

Charlie wrinkles his face. “You do sometimes find crabs.”

“You do sometimes find crabs, but not the edible kind,” Frank replies.

“Oh, don’t sound so sure, Frank,” he says breezily, “Can never know ‘til you try ‘em if they’re –”

“Please do not eat _crabs_ from the _sewers_ ,” Mac says, face crumpling in disgust.

“Alright, if you don’t wanna eat crabs from the sewers, don’t eat crabs from the sewers,” Charlie says, “I’m just saying –”

“Stop! Talking! About! Crabs!” Dennis explodes.

“Alright, then, if we’re not going crabbing in the sewers – which I still don’t think is a good idea, by the way,” Frank adds; Charlie makes a strangled noise, “Then what’s the plan?”

“Plan? There’s no _plan_ ,” Dennis says, and the conversation just kind of stops. Thanks, Dennis. “And no eating crabs from the sewers either, Jesus - I mean, you can, if you really want to die an incredibly painful and embarrassing death, but count me out.”

“What?” Charlie says. "There's no plan?"

“But there’s always a plan!” Mac says, looking on the edge of a panic.

“No! No! No plan, I just need to go to Five Guys, get Dee a burger, and then go home to my apartment, my baby-free apartment, and have a nice quiet evening without any screaming or blood, and try to forget this ever happened,” Dennis says, voice getting faster and faster: reaching the end of his tether and unravelling before their very eyes.

“Good luck with that,” Frank mutters. Jesus, it isn’t even his baby (thank god), why’s he so fussed all of a sudden?

“Oh, I could do with a burger, let’s go get burgers,” Mac says.

Dennis pulls a face. “Oh, I don’t know, Mac, Five Guys is pretty pricey.”

“Uh, then we’ll get Dee Macca’s, and we can go get Five Guys,” Mac says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

“I’m not getting Dee McDonald’s!” Dennis shoots back. “Not while she’s breastfeeding! I shouldn’t even be getting her a burger anyway, Jesus. Can she even eat burgers while she’s breastfeeding? What if it’s bad for the baby?”

“I dunno, uh,” Charlie turns to Frank. “You’re the only dad here, d'you remember anything about Dennis’ mom breastfeeding?”

“I have heard that word way too many times today,” Mac says.

Frank shrugs. “How the hell should I know? I think she used formula, I can’t remember. We mostly let the Mexican ladies raise ‘em.”

“Mexican lady!” Mac gasps. “That’s what you need to do, Dennis! Find a Mexican lady to raise the baby for us!”

“What? No, I am not – I am not finding a Mexican lady to raise Dee’s child for us, okay?” Dennis says. “What I am doing is leaving. God, I hope Dee has actually bought some books on parenting because, if not, she is so screwed.”

“Hey, has anyone actually been to Dee’s for the last couple weeks?” Charlie asks.

Frank snorts. Last couple weeks? Frank hasn’t been there in the last couple months, never mind weeks.

“I haven’t,” Mac says. “I couldn’t handle how fat she was.”

“I know, right?” Charlie says. “But I was kind of transfixed, you know, sometimes you could see the whole baby moving under her skin, it was kind of freaky.”

“I went a couple days ago to bring her groceries because apparently she couldn’t move off the sofa and it was a life-or-death situation and, really, I only went because she would just not stop screaming in my ear,” Dennis replies.

“Was there a lot of, like, baby shit in there?” Charlie asks. “Like, you know, cribs and diapers and stuff.”

“No, not really,” Dennis says, looking a bit confused. “Not in the living room, at least.”

“So she doesn’t have any,” Charlie says, like it’s the solution to some big problem they’re all having. Don’t get Frank wrong, that baby is a damn big problem, but how is that a solution?

“Yeah, so?” Mac says, the epitome of not giving a shit.

“So we need to go get her some!” Charlie says. “I mean, she needs a crib at least.”

“Oh, yeah, probably,” Dennis says, and then it hits Frank; the implications of what he is really saying.

“So you’re telling me that out of all of you,” he says, “ _Charlie_ is the one who realised that having a baby means owning a couple of diaper packs?”

Dennis looks from man to man in the circle. “Apparently, yeah.”

“This baby is so screwed,” Frank tells the ceiling. Jesus, he’d barely been involved in the twins’ upbringing for the first few years-slash-decades, but even he knew _that_.

“Can I just say,” Mac butts in, “if we are making a squad trip to IKEA, you can count me 100% in.”

“Oh no, oh no, oh no no no, can we not just go back to the bar?” Dennis says. “Please? I know we’ve all been overcome with our feelings for the baby or whatever, but –”

“Baby? Who gives a shit about the baby?” Mac scoffs. “I just wanna build a flatpack, dude.”

“IKEA! IKEA! IKEA! IKEA!” Charlie chants.

“Alright, fine,” Dennis says. “All in favour of IKEA?” Mac and Charlie raise their hands. “All in favour of going back to the bar?” Him and Frank raise their hands.

Two versus two. Mac sighs.

“Man, this is really why we need Dee around.”

“And exactly why she shouldn’t have had a baby,” Dennis says. “Soon it’ll be growing up and having ideas and wanting to vote on stuff and we’ll be three against three and then where will we be?’

"Uh, listening to a _child_ ,” Mac says, as if it’s the most ridiculous idea in the world.

Frank agrees, it is. He listened to Dennis and Dee a lot while they were learning to talk to speed up the process and shit, but afterwards they had dick that was actually interesting to say until they hit high school, at least. And even then, Dee was a nightmare to listen to, and Dennis so big-headed that talking to him was practically torture anyway.

“Besides, right now she’s pretty much just an extension of Dee, so we’ve still got a good five to six years before she starts becoming really annoying,” Charlie says.

“Try two years. I think you two skipped the learning to talk stage and went straight to arguing,” Frank tells Dennis.

“Yeah, that doesn’t surprise me.”

"At least there’s only one baby this time,” Mac says.

“And five people for it to argue with,” Dennis replies. “Hey, bit of an odd question, but anyone else finding it weird that the baby doesn’t have a name yet?”

“Oh, yeah, totally weird,” Charlie says.

“I wasn’t gonna mention it, but –” Mac says.

“We had yours and Deandra’s names picked out months before you were born,” Frank says.

“Cool, cause I got another plan,” Dennis says. “We –”

“Wait, we’re not going to IKEA?” Mac says, looking genuinely crestfallen.

“No, no, no, we’re still going to IKEA, but at the same time we’re going to be thinking up baby names,” Dennis says. “We all come up with one each, all names with real feeling and significance behind 'em, and then Dee, having been too lazy to think up a name on her own, will have to name the thing after one of our suggestions! And it’s definitely gonna be mine, cause I have a great name already picked out.”

Dennis turns on his heels with one of his cocky grins that he’s had perfected since before he’d hit middle school, and Charlie and Mac follow at his heels like argumentative puppies.

“No, it’s not! It’s gonna me mine, I’m gonna pick the best baby name! My name’s gonna kick your name’s ass!” Frank hears, over the Charlie’s indistinguishable shrieks; he rolls his eyes before following as fast as his little legs can carry him.


	6. Mac and Dennis Buy Baby Clothes

Mac had spent a long time mulling it over, which he considers quite an achievement. He isn’t exactly known for mulling things over. Mac doesn’t spend ages and ages thinking about what he does before he does it, never mind say it, but now the cat’s got his tongue and he’s got nothing. The cat’s got his tongue and is using it as a plaything. Mac didn’t exactly envisage spending his Friday night pushing a cart round a Babies’R’Us at 8pm, but he also hadn’t expected to find out that Charlie and Frank liked hanging out in the sewers, that Dee got laid more than the rest of them put together, and that he was and then wasn’t a father in quick succession, so there you go. It hasn’t exactly been an easy day for him, and he wants – and that’s where Mac falls short. That’s where the cat comes in. Recognition? Acknowledgement? A drink? Probably a drink, he decides, as he watches Dennis go over the shopping list they’d put together on the drive over. He’s frowning slightly at his notebook, as if trying to figure out if they’ve forgotten anything.

He’s got to say _something._

“I suppose a congratulations is in order.”

“Hm?” Dennis looks up, face softly confused. “Congratulations for what?”

Mac stares at him. “Uh, you know, the fact that you have a niece now?”

Dennis stops in his tracks, clearly very unimpressed and for no good reason. “Really, Mac? Really? You’re this bitter over that?”

“I’m not bitter!”

“Uh, yes you are.”

“Uh, no I’m not.”

Dennis makes a strangled noise, dropping his arms by his sides. “I can’t believe you. Such a stupid thing to be jealous over. Do you know how much work babies are, Mac? Babies are so incredibly annoying and I’m gonna be the one lumped with half the responsibility of raising it, if not more. Really, you shouldn’t be jealous; you should pity me. Pity me!”

“I just got caught up in the idea of being a dad, that’s all,” Mac grumbles, pushing the cart back and forth.

“Why?”

“Cause it just sounds like so much fun,” Mac says. “Okay, maybe not the crying and the screaming and stuff, but things like playing baseball, and going to games, and watching him be Joseph in the nativity play. Can you imagine that? Me and Mac Jr. playing ball in the park on a sunny day. It was just such a nice image, you know?”

“You do know the baby’s a girl, right?” Dennis says like he’s stupid.

“Uh, yeah, I know, I checked,” Mac says like Dennis is even stupider. “I was gonna be the best dad in the entire world, but now the baby’s a girl –”

“– and we’re gonna spend the next decade of our lives having tea parties and getting cheap make-up smeared all over us,” Dennis finishes. “And that’s nothing compared to the second decade. God, why couldn’t Dee have had a boy?”

“I refuse to dress that thing in pink, I simply refuse,” Mac says. “Blue and yellow are fine, but pink? Over my dead body.”

“Oh, no, pink is completely off the table,” Dennis says. “But – but, and hear me out on this – what about purple?”

Mac gasps. “Ooh, purple, that’s good. But, like, bold purple, royal purple, nor any of that prissy lilac shit.”

“Oh, are you two having a baby?” they hear a voice say, and they turn to see a sales assistant standing expectantly behind them.

Mac is about to open his mouth to say, ‘Uh, we _are_ in Babies'R'Us,’ when he hears Dennis clear his throat.

Mac looks at him.

Dennis looks at Mac.

Mac tries to shake his head as slowly and indiscreetly as he can.

Another incredibly not-cool thing about being friends with Dennis is that, when they give each other a glance and they both have exactly the same idea, there is absolutely nothing Mac can do physically, emotionally or even spiritually to stop him from following through with it

“Yes, yes, we are,” Dennis says, turning back to the sales assistant with a warm smile. “I’m Hugh Honey, and this is my partner, Vic Vinegar. We’re expecting a baby in just under a fortnight via surrogacy.”

“We used my sperm,” Mac says, adopting a similar smile. Dennis elbows him in a way which is not inconspicuous in the slightest.

“It doesn’t really matter either way, does it? The child will equally belong to both of us – and for that matter, be equally loved, no matter whose sperm they used –”

“But we did use mine, so,” Mac says.

“Vic, honey,” Dennis says, grin wide and fixed. “Can we not do this here, now? Please?”

The sales assistant stares at them. “Can I help you at all?”

“Yes! Yes,” Dennis says, snapping out of… whatever mood he’s in. “Do you have any deals on for expecting couples? Especially couples of our predisposition?”

“Uh,” she says eloquently. “I can check for you? I don’t know if we have any concessions for…” she trails off. Mac raises his eyebrows pointedly. “Your predisposition.”

“Really?” Dennis says, putting on some major airs. “In 2011? How bizarre.”

“This is a family store, sir,” the assistant says, and Mac doesn’t even need to look at Dennis to know that he’s blanching.

“Are you saying that the family that my partner and I are nurturing is not good enough for your store?” Dennis says, the picture of innocence because he is probably the biggest asshole Mac has ever met. “That the life we are creating is somehow tainted in some way?”

“No, I didn’t mean –” the assistant blathers, keeps blathering as Dennis rips into her.

“Are you saying your business would be embarrassed to serve us? To associate with us? Because we’re two men hoping to raise a child together? You should be ashamed of yourself. Frankly, you should be ashamed of your entire company. I should call your manager. I should call your CEO to complain –”

“Please don’t do that,” she begs.

“Then go find us some deals!” Dennis snaps. “Tsk, tsk!”

He flaps his hands at her, and she hurries away with a tiny squeak. Mac rolls his eyes.

“Okay, that was a bit unnecessary.”

“What? If it gets us some sweet deals, it gets us some sweet deals,” Dennis says. “And if we scare one little shop assistant in the meantime, it’s not the end of the world.”

Mac looks down into the cart, counting how many diaper packs they picked up. “I just think it was crossing a line, is all." One. They picked up one pack of diapers.

"We’ve used Hugh Honey and Vic Vinegar half a dozen times, and now you suddenly have some huge problem with it?” Dennis says. “The one time we’re doing something arguably good and getting Dee a discount so she doesn’t have to break the bank paying us back, and _now_ you have a problem with us lying about being a couple.”

“I don’t have a problem with us pretending to be a couple!” Mac snaps. Thank god no else fancied buying bibs at 8pm, otherwise they’d really be making a scene. “Oh, and, also? You didn’t give me any prior warning that we would we doing the whole Hugh and Vic thing, so, would really appreciate the heads up next time.”

“What?” Dennis splutters. “What are you – we are always ready to be Hugh Honey and Vic Vinegar. I thought that was the deal. Whether it’s things like this, or proposing at restaurants –”

“I still think Guigino’s will give us free dessert if we propose there again,” Mac says.

“Mac, they didn’t give us free dessert last time or the time before,” Dennis says. “There are only so many times we can break up the engagement and then I re-propose before they call our bullshit.”

“What about if I propose?” Mac says. “You never let me propose.”

“I’m the one who proposes!” Dennis’ face is getting progressively redder. “And, anyway, it doesn’t matter, we’re going ahead with the Honey and Vinegar thing and that’s that.”

The diaper pack does contain ninety-six diapers. That’s probably enough, right? One baby can’t produce that much shit. “Well, for the record, I still don’t like it.”

His eyes widen in that way they do whenever Dennis has cracked something about Mac: yet another uncool thing about being friends with him. God, Mac hates everything about this right now. “Oh, you think she’s right, don’t you.”

It’s not a question. “No.”

“Yeah, yeah, you do – you think she’s right, that this is a family store and it’s inappropriate not only for two men to raise a child together because you consider it as, let me guess, an abomination, but also equally if not more inappropriate for us to be in a family store and therefore you think it would be right for them to refuse to serve us.”

Dennis’ face is looking very punchable right now.

“Mac, what you gotta remember is that we’re not actually doing anything inappropriate. Sure, we’re telling a couple lies, but we know we’re already going to hell so who cares about that –”

“Dennis.”

“We’re not actually having a child together, so we’re not actually doing anything too morally reprehensible. We’re just playing the minority card to try get some sweet deals out of it –”

“Dennis.”

“Okay, yeah, the staff here may think otherwise, but screw ‘em. So long as they give us some free stuff, I couldn’t give less of a shit about how immoral they think our behavior is –”

“ _Dennis_.”

“What?” he snaps.

Dennis’ face continues looking invitingly punchable, even more so as he turns around to see not only the gutless little shop assistant behind them but a manager as well, wearing a suit far too big for him and an expression of absolute horror.

“Hello, good sir –” Dennis begins, pretty unconvincingly.

He’s cut off pretty quickly by a uniformed kid with spots and a bad haircut appearing from behind an aisle and saying, “Michael, we have a situation in Aisle 7. Two customers are climbing into the cribs and they, kinda, won’t –”

“ _Charlie_ ,” Mac says to the sky, as if it’s God own fault that he’s surrounded by friends like this – which, really, it is, as He created the heavens and the earth and everything in it, including glue and Charlie’s propensity for it.

“Aisle 7, did you say?” Dennis says to the newcomer, who nods. “Come on, Mac.”

He can hear the manager try to say something to them, but Mac’s as willing to ignore them as Dennis as they stroll on down to find out exactly what kind of trouble Frank and Charlie have gotten themselves into this time.

“So, what d'you reckon?” he says as they pass Aisle 4. “They couldn’t agree on which was the best crib, so they decided that testing them themselves was the best way to go about things?”

“Mhm, whichever broke sooner would be the loser, no doubt,” Dennis says.

“But that doesn’t make any sense! Frank’s gotta have 50 pounds on Charlie, minimum –”

“What do you mean, make any sense?”  Dennis scoffs. “This is Frank and Charlie we’re talking about –”

Their conversation is abruptly overwhelmed by the sound of a lot of shrieking. They turn into Aisle 7 to find Frank and Charlie standing in quaint and colorful cribs on opposite sides of the aisle, hollering with abandon.

“Oh, my god,” Dennis says. “Frank! Charlie! What the hell are you two doing?”

The yelling continues with equal abandon, the manager and sales assistants approaching fast.

“Well, Charlie said that his crib wasn’t safe enough for a baby, and I was trying to prove that the alternative was shitty –”

“So you _got in it_?” Mac says.

“This crib isn’t safe, Frank!” Charlie yells. “It isn’t safe!”

“Alright, alright, we get it, you couldn’t settle this argument like rational human beings, which comes as a surprise to literally none of us,” Dennis says, “Now can you both please get out the cribs?”

There’s a significant lack of screaming in response to that. Charlie shuffles his feet, staring down at his sneakers.

“Gentleman, if I could ask you to please –” the manager begins, and Mac puts a hand in his face.

“Shut up, we’re having a conversation here.”

God, people sometimes.

“I mean, I would if I could,” Frank says.

“What do you mean, if you could?” Dennis says, as Charlie begins the noisy process of clambering out of his crib.

“Can’t get out,” Frank says. “I’m stuck!” He rattles the sides of the crib, which only come up to his waist. “See, Charlie? This is why we need a drop-side crib!”

“The baby will suffocate! The baby will die!” Charlie shrieks.

“Hey, Charlie?” Mac says, as loud as he can, pointing to the car seat sitting inconspicuously next to the crib. “You choose this?”

Charlie’s voice reverts back to normal in about half a second to say, “Yeah, dude, way cheaper than a pram. I mean, who even needs one of those?”

“I do!” Mac says, swooping in and picking it up in an _incredibly_ cool fashion. “Dennis and I have got some booties to buy.”

Dennis snorts, taking the car seat from him as Mac pushes their still very empty trolley back down the aisle.

“Wait, you’re just gonna leave us here?” Charlie yells back down at them.

“Yeup,” Dennis yells back over his shoulder. “You laid down in the hole you’ve dug yourself into, now climb out of it! All yours,” he adds as they walk past the increasingly frazzled manager. “We’re just two dudes wanting to buy some baby clothes.”

“I don’t think that’s the expression,” Mac says, under his voice. “It’s either you dug your own grave, or you made your bed, now –”

“It’s a mixed metaphor, Mac, it’s _supposed_ to – whatever,” Dennis snaps. “Let’s go make this kid the most fashionable baby in the whole of Philadelphia.”

*

When they finally exit the store at ten past nine, crib-less and with Frank and Charlie still arguing in the distance over by the car, the sky is dark and full of stars. He can even see Jupiter, as big and fat as Dee, though a lot brighter. They’re carrying bags stuffed with clothes, mostly from the boy’s section because they were cheaper and a lot less pink, and Dennis is going over the shopping list one last time.

“So, we’ve got clothes, diapers, diaper bag, diaper cream, baby wipes, bibs, burp clothes, pacifiers –”

“Oh, we definitely need those pacifiers,” Mac says.

“A car seat, a bunch of bottles, and washcloths,” he finishes. “Shit, that’s a lot of stuff. Who knew babies needed so much.”

“Do you think there’s anything we’re forgetting?” Mac asks. He’s still staring at the sky. The baby’ll be a Leo, just like Dennis – not that it means anything, of course, but it’s still pretty cool. “Anything else we can get Dee that she might need?”

Dennis taps his pen against his notebook. “Don’t think so, no. You know what, though, I could so do with some food right now.”

“Come to think of it, I am pretty hungry,” Mac agrees. When was the last time he ate? Five, six hours ago? That is way, way, _way_ too many hours ago.

“Baby shopping is hard work,” Dennis says thoughtfully. “Hey, Frank, Charlie? Wanna go Burger King?”

“Burger King!” the distant figure of Charlie Kelly yells, fist-bumping the air.

“Cool,” Dennis says, walking in his direction. “I guess we’ll dump this all at the bar, go grab some burgers, and I’ll go pick up Dee tomorrow morning.”

 _How to identify the planets_ , Mac thinks, as he follows Dennis to the car. _And how God created the heavens and the earth five thousand years ago. That’s a thing I can teach the baby about, even if it is a girl._


	7. The Baby Gets A Name

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This took forever but it's a hefty one!
> 
> Warning for canon-typical racism, sexism, and other awfulness, and also canon-typical child abuse in Dee's past.

The morphine’s run out.

It’s easy to get morphine in a hospital, if you’re a good liar. An older mom, first pregnancy, whip-thin when she’s not growing a whole ‘nuther person inside her. No husband or mother or sister by her bed to hold her hand. You moan and you writhe and you cry on your bed, and she hooks you up; _it hurts_ , you tell the midwife, _I’m scared_ , and she gives you even more. It probably helped that Dee had gone external to get help clambering back on the wagon just long enough to pop this thing out in the world. No problems there, momma want a morphine drop-drop-drop. What else you got?

It was a muggy day in Philly, but it’s always sunny when you’re on medical-grade opiates, having a party in the hospital room whilst the oblivious doctor fingering you tells you to just breathe. Oh, nothing else can make you forget you’re about to push 10 pounds of hell out of a 5-pound bag more than the god of dreams.

She’d even got an epidural on top of that. God bless America.

When the morphine ran out, Dee had a baby, as tiny as it was ugly, exercising its new right to scream the hospital down. She could say she was frightened. One could argue that she was relieved. She was definitely high.

 _I am more vulnerable than you_ , she thinks, stroking her daughter’s head, the bumps of her skull, _even though you are a baby_.

“18 hours old, and all you’ve done is screamed, slept, and shitted,” she says. “Not a bad start, baby.”

The baby doesn’t reply. Go figure.

7.30am. Dennis will be here soon. God, when was the last time she was up this early? Earlier; they brought her baby back from the nursery just before six, when she started singing for her supper the third time that night, and she’s been in Dee’s arms ever since.

Okay, that’s a lie, Dee put her down to have breakfast, a shitty hospital fare even if it did include orange juice. She’d gobbled it down like she had done her dinner last night; like they’d take her plate away before she took the next bite. She’d barely managed more than another five minutes of shut-eye before the baby was off again. Every move she’s made to put her down has resulted in a snuffle, a small noise, and Dee just does not want more screaming. She can’t. She can’t do it. Even with almost a full-night’s sleep under her belt, if it starts screaming again, she may just chuck it out the window. See who’s laughing now, baby.

So, Dee’s sat in bed – upright, mind you, she doesn’t want to have a baby and then accidentally kill it the next day cause she was dumb enough to fall asleep and accidentally suffocate it –  and had breakfast, thought about beer, and watched the sun rise.

It’s been over half a year and it still itches. If she breastfeeds, it’ll almost be long enough to get a purple chip.

It’s nice to be in the same bed as someone, even if they are barely the length of your forearm. It’s been a while; Dee’s barely gotten dates since she hit the four-month mark, never mind gotten laid. Besides, it’s hardly as if she’d have gotten her cuddle on with any of them. Well, Ben the soldier. He did have really nice arms – but no one else. It’s not really her thing. Dennis would never admit it, but it was always him who snuck into her bed at night when they were small and he was scared. Always, always, always. Only when they hit middle school did Dee start kicking him out, even when the sounds of Mom and Dad arguing reverberated throughout the house - Mom and Frank. Jesus, she is tired. But, even then, if she ever woke in the night she could still sometimes feel his eyes on her. Does the baby feel it, too? Does she ever wake up from her tiny baby naps and sense the eyes on her, trying to figure her out?

Bastard. He better be here soon.

By the time he rocks up, it’s almost ten o’clock, Dee has wheedled three magazines out of three nurses, and the baby is going to town on her left nip. He looks no more well-rested then her, which, _how_ , he hasn’t just had a baby, and the fluorescent lights makes the line on his neck where his make-up ends and his skin starts really obvious. He’s already carrying a car seat, surprisingly having the foresight to know that a baby kinda needs one to get around.

The car ride home is terrifying. Or, it should be terrifying what with the baby that is not even 24 hours old in the backseat. It’s mostly annoying, life following in the natural progression of things. Dull as hell. Trying to put her in safe and sound without her screaming her little head off, bickering with Dennis about the inanest bullshit, using his stupid new fancy phone to Google stuff: resisting the urge to turn in the passenger seat and watch her the entire way home to make sure she’s safe.

If the car slammed into the right, Dennis and the baby would both die – and Dee, probably, too, with no one at the wheel.

From the back, only the baby, already snoozing in the back.

From the left, only Dee.

From the front, and they’re all fucked.

Well, technically nothing could hit them from the left as Dennis is taking the riverside route, which Dee would usually be ripping into him for. The 8th is _way_ less busy and really, Den, do you want to be stuck in traffic for an hour with a screaming baby in the backseat just for the sake of the view –

Wait. Why is Dennis taking the riverside route?

“Dennis, this isn’t the way to my apartment!”

“We’re not going to your apartment,” Dennis says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “We’re going to the bar.”

“We can’t do the bar, why are you going to the bar?” Dee says. “I have a new-born. It’s probably illegal or something.”

“So, what, you’re just gonna not go to the bar for the next 21 years?” Dennis asks. “The bar where you supposedly work? Anyway, we don’t open ‘til 12, technically, so.”

He does have a point. “It isn’t clean enough for a new-born. All those germs and shit.”

“Aha, I thought you might say that,” Dennis says. “Charlie cleaned the whole place top to bottom.” Dee raises her eyebrows. “Okay, he cleaned the bar and, like, a couple of the booths, but it’s good enough. Come on, Dee. We’ve got a surprise for you.”

“I don’t want a surprise!”

Dennis huffs. “Dee, the _one_ time we do something nice for you –”

“You forgot to get me my burger!”

He flaps a hand at her and, oh, that asshole better keep two hands on the wheel or Dee will rip his face off. “Alright, alright, stop screeching! We thought that, cause you didn’t have a baby shower –”

“Uh, I did have a baby shower,” Dee says, like her brother is the most stupid man in the world, because her brother is absolutely most definitely at least in the top 10.

Dennis’ entire forehead wrinkles. Damn, has his receding hairline has gotten so much worse in the past couple years. “You did? When?”

“Like, four or five months ago, I don’t know,” Dee says. “I only invited Mom’s side of the family so they’d give me baby stuff. Kind of a girls-and-gays only type of thing, except I didn’t invite Mac.”

“Sounds dull as hell,” Dennis says. “Was Gail the Snail there?”

“Sliming all over the walls,” Dee says. “At least there weren’t dudes there for her to give handies to. She didn’t even buy me anything, can you believe that? I gave her full range of my snack cupboard and she didn’t even buy me a pack of diapers.”

“Wait, so you already have diapers?” Dennis says, pulling up in front of the bar. 

“Of course I have diapers – Dennis, I said I didn’t want to go to the bar!”

“Yeah, well, we’re at the bar, now, so you’re gonna come in, have a beer, and chill the fuck out,” Dennis says, very matter-of-fact, moving round to the other side to open her door for her. Dee does not budge an inch. “Come on, Dee. All the guys are here, we’ve done something nice for you, so, really, if you think about it, it’s very selfish of you to not want to come in.”

Cons of going in: she’s dog-tired, there might be customers, and they will all be grossed out if the baby gets hungry again.

Pros of going in: Dennis is annoying, they might have gotten her free stuff, and they will all be grossed out if the baby gets hungry again.

“Alright, alright, but if the baby starts crying, I blame you,” Dee says.

Getting the baby out of the car is even more time-consuming then getting her in, as Dennis is getting impatient and doesn’t even pretend to be helping while insulting her methods the entire time. Dee is holding back a scream the entire time, aware that every single little bit of movement could launch the baby wide awake and into a screaming frenzy yet again. Even the outside of the pub stinks of booze. Glorious, glorious booze, Dee thinks, as Dennis shoves open the door and they are greeted by a whisper-shout of “ _Surprise_!”

The bar is covered with baby shit. Clothes, diapers, toys, dummies, the whole shebang. Someone has put up a blue banner saying, ‘CONGRATULATIONS ON THE BABY BOY’ with the final word crossed out and “GURL” written above it in black sharpie instead. Each and every one of them has a beer in their hands.

Goddammit.

“Dennis, you do know I have all this shit already,” Dee says.

Mac’s arms drop to his side. “You do?”

“Yes, you idiot,” Dee snaps, not even bothering to put the car seat down. “What kind of pregnant woman doesn’t buy out the entirety of the Toys’R’Us catalogue before she gives birth?”

“Uh, we were kind of presuming that’d be you,” Charlie says, Frank grumbling at his side.

“Yeah, I mean, you are incredibly irresponsible, so,” Dennis agrees.

“But you’re using the car seat!” Charlie adds. “That car seat, the one I picked out.”

Dee turns to her brother. “Wait, you didn’t borrow this from the hospital?”

“Wait, you can do that?” Dennis says. “Dammit, I would’ve just done that instead.”

“Yeah, and given it back in two, maybe three years,” Dee replies.

“Oh, no, she would’ve grown out of it by then,” Frank says. “Babies grow really fast.”

“Hey, uh, how’s baby?” Charlie butts in. “Oh, you look like shit, by the way.”

“Thanks, Charlie, that’s exactly what I needed to hear,” Dee replies sunnily. “Baby’s fine, baby’s good – baby _loves_ the car, she really loves the car. Went to sleep like a champ.”

“How she’s been, with the whole sleeping thing?” Frank asks. “You two screamed the house down every night and most of the day, it was terrible.”

Dee places the car seat down carefully on the ground next to her, it’s occupant still sound asleep, thank God. “Honestly, I don’t really know yet, she was in the nursery all night –”

“You put her in the nursery all night?” Dennis exclaims.

“Uh, _yeah_ ,” Dee says. “I didn’t have anyone else there who could look after her, her constant screaming was starting to piss me off a little bit, and it didn’t cost anything. Hello, free childcare? It was great!”

Mac looks at her like a man who is not the father of a new-born – aka, still firmly set on the idealisation that all mothers want to be and should be with a foot of their babies 24/7. “But, Dee, you’re her _mom_. You should be with her at all times!”

Dee snorts. What an idiot.

“I’m serious, Dee!” he continues, like an asshole. “What if she needed you?”

“Then the nurses brought her to me, I gave her a bit of a feed, and they took her right back,” Dee says brightly.

“Yeah, that’s pretty much what Barbara did, except without the whole breastfeeding bullshit,” Frank says from his perch on one of the barstools. “Wise move, Deandra.”

“Oh, like I’m ever gonna be taking parenting tips from you,” Dee snaps.

“Yeah, and look at how well we turned out,” Dennis says simultaneously. “Dee, an unmarried mother at thirty-five.”

“Shut up, Dennis – oh, thank you, Charlie, by the way,” Dee says. Charlie turns from his animated conversation with Mac about… something, probably whatever insane parenting methods their equally insane mothers used on them. He looks at her like she’s speaking a foreign language. “For the car seat? The baby seems to pretty like it – and the sign. Bit orthodox but whatever.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, you like the stuff, cool, whatever,” Dennis says before Charlie even gets to open his mouth. “Now for the real reason we brought you here.” An ulterior motive. Of course there’s an ulterior motive. “ _Baby names_.”

“Oh, come on – I am not naming my baby ‘Waitress’ or whatever stupid name you guys have come up with.”

Who the hell do they think they are, trying to pick out the name of her baby for her? Dee’s thought about baby names. Dee’s _definitely_ thought about baby names, like, at least twice. Who hasn’t? Them guys, that’s who, before the last 24 hours. It’s bullshit – _bullshit_ , is what it is.

“Come on, Dee, we have some incredibly cool names picked out,” Mac says. “Besides, calling it ‘the baby’ is starting to get a bit weird.”

“Yeah, at least ‘Waitress’ is a sensible occupation by which you can call someone,” Charlie agrees.

“Shut up, Charlie, I’m not naming my baby that,” Dee snaps.

Cons: having to listen to whatever names these lunatics have come up with.

“I mean, it’s pretty obvious by now you haven’t got a named picked out –” Frank begins saying.

Pros: only other real option is leaving, and even then Dennis will end up banging on about his suggestion the entire ride home.

“Okay, fine, give ‘em to me,” Dee says, picking up the car seat again and moving towards the closest booth. “But first, I need to see down, my cooch is killing me.”

The guys immediately erupt into disgusted yells. Oh, if that isn’t music to her ears.

“Dee!” Dennis snaps. “Can you not be completely disgusting for one minute?”

Dee places the car seat down on the floor yet again before slumping into the booth seat, groaning. “Oh, that feels so good.”

“Dee, pint or bottle?” Mac yells from beneath the bar, as Dennis takes her bag and moves to sit opposite her in the booth.

“Can’t drink,” she yells back, unbuckling the baby. She stirs briefly, smacking her mouth, before settling again. “Still breastfeeding, gotta wait another three months.”

Mac’s mouth falls open. “Three months without alcohol?”

Dee shrugs. “Already been doing it for six, what’s another three? Gotta say, ginger beer is an absolute blessing. Non-alcoholic, but with enough spice just give it that bit of a kick.”

“Have you been going to AA?” Charlie asks, overly casual.

“No, Charlie, I haven’t seen the Waitress at AA,” Dee says. “So gimme a ginger beer, and get on with it.”

Mac pops up from behind the bar with that tiny grin he gets when he thinks he has an amazing idea. “If I get you a ginger beer, can I go first?”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever, I don’t care – can you two please both shut up?” Dee snaps at Dennis and Charlie, both immediately launching into protest. “I’ll get to you two eventually, okay?”

“Okay, fine, Mac, you can go first,” Charlie says, with obvious reluctance, as Mac cracks open a ginger beer with a hiss that sounds like music to Dee’s ear.

“Thanks, Charlie,” Mac says, giving him a grin as he brings her ginger beer around.

It doesn’t quite hit the spot – misses it by a country mile – but it’s a lot goddamn better than orange juice. Dennis has a face like soured milk in the seat opposite, but Mac has brought him an actual beer as well, so he sits back and gives Mac an apathetic wave of _go ahead, whatever, I don’t care_. Only then does Mac start on his baby-name speech like he was waiting for Dennis’ permission because those two are still way too hooked up on each other.

“Okay, so, I’ve done a lot of thinking over the past twelve hours or so – searching not only on Google, but inside myself. A deep, spiritual searching, reaching out to our Lord and Savior to help find the perfect name for this baby, this gift from God, and I think I’ve found the perfect one.”

Mac pauses, presumably for what he thinks is dramatic effect. Dee has long since begun to regret this.

“Mackenzie.”

The bar erupts in complaints.

“ _What_?”

“That is literally the worst name I have ever heard –”

“I am not naming my baby after _you_ –”

“Oh, naming a baby girl _Son of Kenzie_ , what a great idea, Mac –”

“No, no, no, listen,” Mac says. “I took it from Alexander Mackenzie, a Scottish explorer who is known for accomplishing the first east to west crossing of North America – north of Mexico, at least, but hey, who cares about Mexico – he’s a National Historic Person, _and_ the Mackenzie River is named after him.”

“So what?” Charlie says. “Why should any of us give a shit about a Scottish dude who went on a road trip two hundred years ago?”

“Charlie, you first left Philly not even two months ago,” Mac says. “Alright, if that doesn’t convince you, let me tell you the motto of the MacCoinnich tribe: _sic itur as astra_.”

Mac grins like he expects them to be bowled over, falling at his knees and singing his praises, just because he said some shitty bit of Latin.

“Yeah, that’s all Greek to me,” Dennis says.

“It means ‘Such is the way to immortality’, and it’s cool as hell, Dennis,” Mac snaps. “Okay, fine, clearly you’re not convinced, but I think it’s cool name and it should definitely, definitely remain on the table.”

“It’s not on the table,” Dennis says.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t even name her that even if you were the father,” Dee says.

“Uh, of course you wouldn’t, because then she’d have my surname and you can’t name a kid Mackenzie McDonald,” Mac says like she’s an idiot.

“Well, unless you became Ronnie Reynolds, there’s no way in hell my baby would have your surname,” Dee says, because _he’s_ the idiot here.

“Alright, alright, let’s not get into an argument over something that is so unimportant I haven’t even been listening for the last five minutes,” Dennis interrupts as Mac opens his mouth to yell back, raising his hands to try and calm them. Mac huffs and storms back to the bar to sit next to Frank; Dee takes another sip of her ginger beer to hide her smirk. “Can I suggest mine, now?”

Dee tips her bottle at him. “Be my guest, I don’t care.”

Dennis stands up with a “ _Finally_ ,” like every second he spent waiting was akin to torture on his half. “Now, I’ve been doing my research, and it turns out the name Dennis comes from Dionysus, son of Zeus and the god of wine, revelry, fertility, and dance. I think that’s pretty suitable, considering my lifestyle and life choices.”

There’s a general murmur of disagreement. Mac seems a little more like he agrees, Charlie like he isn’t sure what revelry means. Dee, for one, thinks the whole concept’s ridiculous. Dennis? A Greek God? That’s even more stupid than Golden God – and if he dares even suggest that she call her baby Goldie, she will actually commit fratricide.

“Wait, does that make me Zeus?” Frank says. “I could get down with that.”

“You’re not our dad, Frank,” Dee snaps.

“If anything, that would make Bruce Matthis Zeus,” Dennis adds. “I mean, it even rhymes. Bruce, Zeus – anyway, that’s not the point. It turns out Deandra is distantly related, etymologically speaking, to Dennis, because of course Dee would end up with a far inferior version of my own name –”

“Well, this is all news to me,” Frank says.

“Shut up, Frank,” Mac says. “So you’re going for a Greek goddess angle?”

“Nah, it turned out that all the names of the Greek goddesses were pretty stupid,” Dennis replies.

“Good, because I am not naming my baby Denise,” Dee says as Charlie replies, “Yeah, you can’t go around naming a baby Aphrodite.”

They all immediately turn to stare at him.

“Charlie,” Mac says slowly. “How the hell do you know who Aphrodite is?”

“Uh, I could ask you the same question,” he shoots back.

“I asked you first!”

Instead of yelling straight back, Charlie fidgets. It’s the sort of fidget where he’s trying to make himself seem completely inconspicuous but it makes it really obvious that he doesn’t want to be looked at. His entire face changes. His cheeks go slack, eyes a bit blurry, mouth drooping. He really is a remarkably weird looking man. “I was just, y'know, tryna impress the –”

“Of course you were, of course you were,” Dennis says drily as Mac groans. “So I decided to ditch the Greek angle but, y'know, why not goddesses? Did a quick bit of research, skipped Egyptians because I feel like naming your kid ‘Isis’ isn’t the wisest of ideas, and came across _Freya_.”

Freya.

_Freya._

Not bad. Unusual, but not too unusual to be considered exotic or hippie, easily pronounceable, easily spelt if you’re not Charlie. Dee’s surprised by how remarkably not-hideous a name it is.

“Old Norse for _the Lady_ , she is the Norse goddess of love, sex –”

Bit weird to associate her baby with sex but whatever.

“Beauty, fertility, gold –”

There it is.

Dennis then says something that sounds a bit like _say-der_ , whatever the hell that is, “– war, and death. She rode a chariot pulled by two cats, and possessed a cloak of made out of falcon feathers. How cool is that, right? She’s a twin as well, her brother Freyr is a God of a bunch to stuff as well – so, yeah, Freya Reynolds. Pretty good name, don’t you think?”

The other three boys all turn to stare at her, Charlie looking particularly excited. Dee, of course, ignores them to look back down at her baby, how it fits her little nose and the dark smattering of hair on her head. She mouths it, testing how it tastes: the lightness of the _Frey_ , the simplicity of the _a_. It’s sweet. It’s _boring_.

“Yeah, I’m gonna pass,” Dee says.

“What? _Why_?” Dennis splutters.

He looks gob-smacked and it is wonderfully satisfying. “She just doesn’t look that Scandinavian.”

“Well, I doubt she’s seen any birds yet,” Mac says.

“Very funny, Mac,” Dennis says, as Charlie snorts.

“So are we crossing off pretty much all the Swedish-Americans in Philly off the potential dad list?” Frank butts in.

“Of course we are,” Mac says. “Why would any Swede bang Dee? I mean –”

“Don’t you dare do it, Mac,” Dennis says, “don’t you dare –”

“We invented IKEA,” he continues in an accent that would be an insult to all Swedes to call Swedish. “We’re the kings of common sense.”

“Great,” Dennis says. “Great, that’s just great, that’s fantastic. Not even 24-hours-old and you’ve already subjected the baby to your awful, and I mean _awful_ , accent.”

“You’re just pissed that Dee doesn’t like your idea,” Frank says.

“Oh, yeah?” he snaps. “Give us your idea, then, Frank. Come on, tell us your amazing name you’ve come up with for your first and only grandchild.”

Frank stares back, face completely unmoving. “Roxy.”

When he turns back to Dee, Dennis has that slightly demented look in his eye he sometimes gets, like he’s been battling long and hard for decades to have his claim that Roxy is a terrible name confirmed by another living human being. To be fair, it is a pretty shitty name, but Dee has pretty much accepted that Dennis is well on his way to crazy town.

“Yeah, Roxy!” Frank says. “I just think it’s a cool name.”

“But what does it mean, Frank?” Dennis says. “What does it _mean_?”

“Short for Roxanne,” Charlie butts in. “Like the _Police_ song.”

“Okay, bottom line; I’m not naming my kid after a prostitute,” Dee says. “No Roxanne, no Nancy, no Satine – come on up, Charlie, I’m getting bored of this now.”

“Okay, okay,” he says, leaping to his feet as Dennis collapses back into his chair. “So I have two suggestions –”

“Hey!” Mac interrupts, surprise, surprise. “How come Charlie gets to suggest two names and I only got to suggest one?”

Frank twists to stare at Charlie, red-faced. “You didn’t tell me that!”

“I feel like, as the uncle, I should be able to offer two if not three names for the baby,” Dennis says.

“Shut up, Dennis,” Dee snaps. “Go ahead, Charlie.”

“Okay, so the first name is Susie –”

“ _What_?” Dennis splutters.

“No offence, Charlie, but that is a terrible name,” Frank says.

“Yeah, it’s pretty bad.” It’s not even Susan, just a weird shortening that sounds like a Grandma name or something weird dudes make to hump in prison. Even Susan is awful – like hell she’ll be naming her kid after something from those books with the weird-talking-Jesus-Lion.

“No, no, no, hear me out here,” Charlie says, raising his hands to try and quieten them all. It’s a pretty good idea, actually; they’re making enough noise to raise hell, never mind wake a baby. “Susie, right, but spelt in the cool way like the Banshees.”

“Oh, _Siouxsie_ Siouxsie, not _Susie_ Susie,” Dennis says, like it’s a good idea, the absolute idiot. “Oh, okay, I can work with that."

"Why did she rename herself that, anyway?" Mac says. "That's stupid." 

“Oh, cause she was doing the thing," Dee says.   
  
"What thing?" Dennis asks.  
  
"That thing, you know, when someone takes a thing from a culture that isn't their culture and tries to make it their thing cause it sounds cool."   
  
"Oh, yeah that thing," Dennis says. "Of course I know that thing. It's 2011, everyone knows about the thing. I don't know what it's called though."   
  
"Racism?" Mac suggests.  
  
"No, not racism - I mean, yeah, kind if racism, but - anyway, that's not the point."

"The point is I'm not naming my baby that," Dee says. "Cause my kid isn’t Native American or the leader singer of a shitty British rock band from the 80s."

"Hey!" Charlie says. "Do not diss the Banshees in front of me, Dee, or I swear - "

“Alright, so that crosses every Native American in Philadelphia off the list of potential fathers as well as every Swede,” Mac pipes up.

“How many potential dads does that leave now?” Frank says.

“I dunno, how many Native Americans are there in Philly?” Mac asks.

“Not many,” Dennis replies, wincing.

“We did kill a lot of them,” Mac says, with just a little bit of retrospection on his face.

“Whatever, it doesn’t matter,” Charlie interrupts. “Siouxsie Sioux was neither Native nor American but she still spelt her name that way, so it’s still a viable option.”

“Eh, it’s an old lady name,” Dee says. “I’m not giving my baby an old lady name, no matter how cool the spelling is.”

Charlie looks flabbergasted, like he cannot imagine where she might have found the nerve to dismiss the suggestion he managed to evoke with his very own brain. “But it’s such a cool spelling!”

“Charlie, do you even know how to spell Siouxsie?” Dennis asks. “Or Sioux, for that matter?”

Charlie flounders, eyes on the ceiling as if the damp could give him the answer.

“Thought not, next name,” Dennis says.

“Okay, fine. What about Stevie?” Charlie says.

Mac and Dennis give each other that look that they do when they’re both pleasantly surprised about the same thing.

“It’s short, it’s cute, not too modern and not too old. Got it from Stevie Nicks – you know, Fleetwood Mac, very cool. Also, that Captain America movie just came out, and d’you know what the man himself was called? Steve Rogers! And what’s better, what’s more _American_ , than naming your kid after the guy who punched Hitler in the face?”

“Wait, I don’t remember that happening in the movie,” Mac says.

“That’s because you were too focused on his superhuman abs,” Dee replies.

“I was not!” A moment of hesitation, then, “They were really good abs.”

“So good I almost went into labor in my seat,” Dee says.

“Didn’t he punch that red guy in the face?” Frank butts in.

“Oh, yeah, that one from the Matrix,” Dennis replies.

“No, he didn’t punch Hitler in the face in the movie,” Charlie explains. “But he did in real life, everyone knows that.”

There’s a pause as everyone stares at Charlie.

“Uh, no, they don’t,” Mac says, face all wrinkled up.

Charlie looks at them blankly. “They don’t?”

“Yeah, dude, cause it didn’t happen!”

“Did you really just imply that not only was Captain America a real living person who actually existed,” Dennis says slowly, “But he _also_ punched Adolf Hitler in the face?”

“No, of course not, I –”

“Charlie, those are movies,” Frank says.

“I know that they’re movies!” Charlie says. “I know that Iron Man isn’t real, and HYDRA wasn’t an actual thing and all that, I just thought there might have been a soldier during, y’know, WWII who just took a lot of steroids and maybe some cocaine and went America all over Germany’s ass! Just, like, a real figure turned fictional, right? Like Robin Hood, or Pocahontas, or Hannibal Lecter –”

There’s another incredibly blunt silence.

“Hannibal Lecter isn’t real either!” Mac explodes.

“Oh, excuse me for not knowing which serial killers are real or not!” Charlie’s shrieking now, because of course he’s shrieking, but it’s in an incredibly weird way: as high-pitched as normal, but weirdly breathy and quiet. “Excuse me for not knowing the Jack the Ripper was, I don’t know, created for those detective books, or whether the Zodiac Killer was just made up by the media for kicks –”

“They’re both real!” Dennis yells in that similar whisper-shout.

“I don’t care!” Charlie yells back and, huh, baby still asleep. Maybe he does have more than a couple brain cells to rub together. “I still think Stevie’s a cool name.”

“Stevie,” Dee says, looking down at the car seat and its tiny occupant. “Stevie Reynolds. Stephanie Reynolds.” She leans down strokes her nose and the baby makes a little noise, stirring from sleep. “How d’you like that, baby? You wanna be called Stevie?”

The gang holds their breath.

The baby yawns.

“Eh. Cool name, Charlie, but I’m gonna stick with Bianca,” Dee says.

“ _Bianca?_ ” comes the yell from various members of the gang.

“Dee, for the love of all things holy, why would you call your only child _Bianca_?” Dennis says. “Why would you grow a child in your womb for nine months, nurse it from your very breast, and look down with maternal love in your eyes and think, hey, Bianca! That’s not a completely disgusting name to give my infant.”

Dee swivels back around in her seat to glare at Dennis and, _ow_. God, she wished she had a pillow to sit on. “Bianca’s a nice name!”

“Is anyone else getting a kinda Eastern European vibe?” Mac asks. “Cause I know I am.”

“Can I at least say why I want to call her Bianca?” Dee snaps.

They fall silent, if with a grumble.

“Fine,” Mac says, in that voice he uses when he’s only listening to Dee because he physically has no other choice. “Tell us why you want to name your kid Bianca.”

“After the character from Taming of the Shrew!” If Dee sounds like she’s pleased with herself, it’s because she is pleased with herself. It’s not every day a baby gets named after a Shakespearian character. “It was my favorite play as a teenager so I thought –”

“You named your daughter after a character referred to repeatedly as a _shrew_?” Dennis says.

“No, you idiot, that’s Katie,” Dee says. “Bianca is the little sister.”

“Oh, so instead of being the younger sister of a tempestuous bitch, Bianca is now the daughter of a tempestuous bitch,” Dennis says. “Seems fair. Not bad, Dee.”

“Yeah, not bad,” Frank agrees.

“Oh, shut up, it’s better than anything you came up with,” Dee snaps. “God, why am I even listening to you guys? Be a help, not a hinder.”

“Bebe,” Charlie blurts.

“Sorry?” Dennis says, turning to him.

“Bebe,” he repeats, as if it makes more sense a second time around. If his face looks blank, it’s deceiving; anyone who knows Charlie even a bit would be able to see the excitement bubbling behind his eyes. “Bianca ‘ _Bebe’_ Reynolds. Sounds good, don’t it?”

“No,” gasps one twin.

“Yes,” gasps the other. “And if she’s Bianca Barbara Reynolds, the Bebe would make ever more sense!”

“ _What_?” Dee snaps.

“Dee. Come on. Mom’s first granddaughter? First grandkid, ever?” Dennis says. “Gotta be named after her.”

“Dennis, she’s dead,” Dee says. “Who gives a shit if I don’t name _my_ kid after her? She certainly wouldn’t.”

“Alright, then you gotta use one of our names as the middle name,” Frank says.

“I don’t have to do dick,” Dee says. “I don’t even have to give her a middle name.”

The rest of the day passes in pretty much a hazy, exhausting blur. Once it’s been established that, yes, fine, fucking fine, she’ll name her baby after her bitch of a dead mother and they’re done here, they load all the baby stuff they bought into the car – at least, Mac and Charlie load stuff into the car. Dennis is too busy ‘organizing’ and berating Dee to actually lift anything heavy, and Frank’s long buggered off to go do something stupid. As soon as Dee tells Mac to prove to Dennis just how strong and muscular he is, baby stuff is disappearing into the trunk at a minorly alarming speed. The guys all go back inside to have a couple more beers and maybe to serve the occasional customer once Bebe starts screaming again – and that’s her name. Bebe. Bianca Barbara Reynolds.

Fuck.

Her baby is a _person_. A tiny person that is sucking on her tit like it’s cocaine, but a person none the less.

Dee doesn’t know what to expect when her and Dennis finally make it back to her apartment. For it to look different, somehow. For the baby stuff she’s bought – minimal compared to the bullshit the guys bought – to look more important, more treasured, more real, but it doesn’t. It’s all just stuff, useless crap she’s got to make use of anyway, and there’s a baby in her arms and a brother yapping in her ear and a constant, constant weight on her head, her shoulders, her bones. She just wants to lie down, but Bebe keeps on screaming, and Dennis keeps on yapping, and it’s all just stuff. All just distractions to keep her from sleep. Goddammit.

She sends a thanks back in time to last week’s Dee for having already set up the crib. No changing table or any of that bullshit; Bebe goes straight down on the kitchen table for that. It’s not like she ever eats at it. She pretty much eats all her meals on the couch, where she ends up now; feet on the coffee table and baby on her tit as she relaxes for the first time all day. Episode of this, swap. Episode of that, and repeat. It’s all bullshit, it’s all complete bullshit, and Dee tells Bebe so; badly acted, badly written, and she would absolutely prove it, if only she could reach the remote.

“You turn off sound, you see, and suddenly it looks a whole lot worse,” Dee says. “All the emotion in her words and not in her body.”

Bebe keeps on sucking. Dee manages to keep up her running commentary throughout the first episode, but even her own voice holds no interest to eventually. When it finally hits 7pm, Dee turns off all the light in the apartment – all the main ones, anyway. She leaves a couple lamps; one by her bed, by the couch, in the kitchen. Enough to just about see by - all the shit that could be on the floor is not on the floor, so she should be fine. Dennis left several hours ago, with no other real choice once she’d successfully put Bebe down for a nap and then promptly crashed on the couch herself. Her and Bebe are pretty much in total darkness.

It does approximately fuck-all.

She rocks. She bounces. She swaddles. Literally everything she does is fucking wrong, but it’s fine, Dee tells herself, she even tells the air.

“It’s okay, Bebe. Life is very loud and weird and confusing, I get it. You spent, what, nine months inside a tiny lil warm, wet room. I’d be confused and constantly screaming as well if I was forced out of there.”

A siren wail cuts over both of them, sending Bebe into even more terrified fits of screaming, and Dee rarely hates living slap-bang in the middle of a big city but, oh, if she could tear off the siren of every single police car in the entire state, she would.

“I really don’t know where all that bullshit about nine months came from. It’s ten months. You were conceived – don’t worry if you don’t know what that means, you’ll find out soon enough – in late October, you popped out late July. That’s – oh, wait, no, that is nine months. Shit. I was going by the whole 40 weeks of pregnancy, 4 weeks in a month kinda deal. God, I hope you grow up to be better at math than your mom. I should probably start calling myself Mommy, shouldn’t I? Or maybe –” Dee rearranges her lips, her tongue, where the sound is centered in her mouth, “Mummy, dearest. Shall I be your mummy, like Prince Charles calls the Queen?”

Bebe keeps wailing, on and on and on.

“Not impressed, huh?” Dee says, dropping back into American. "It’s fine, you’ve never heard a British accent, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. I guess it could be Momma? What d'you think about Momma?”

She gives Bebe a couple more futile bounces.

“I’ll stick to Mommy, then. Mommy will stick to Mommy, then, I mean. God, Mommy’s apologizing to you and you can’t even speak English yet. At least this Mommy is apologizing. Mommy’s mommy didn’t apologize to Mommy once in Mommy’s entire life. I’m overdoing it, aren’t I? I’m overdoing it. Well, your Grandma Barbara – your namesake, thanks to Uncle Dennis – was a bitch. I may as well get it out in the open now.”

She turns around to pace back down the length of the apartment, her legs moving on autopilot, left-right-left-right-left-right.

“You’ll probably find out at some point when I get piss-drunk in your preteens and tell you everything I hate about my life and my mother and your uncle and your kinda-grandpa, if he’s even still alive then, and your uncle’s awful, awful friends. I’ll ruin every single last bit of innocence you had before you even hit high school, and you’ll probably hate me. I know you’ll hate me, and that’s okay. I hated my mom, too. I think that’s a thing that happens with all moms and daughters, the moment when whatever nurturing feminine bond you had between you finally breaks, and you see her for what she really is; an insecure, selfish bitch who’s trying to relive their youth through you. That’s the only time I’ve ever missed her, did you know that? Early labor, active labor, transition phase, I couldn’t give less of a shit. She probably would’ve just pissed me off like she did last time, standing at my side and helping me breathe and, god, probably small talk. Like, she has given birth. She should know that when I’m having a massive goddamn contraction every other minute that maybe I don’t care about whose husband is sleeping with the maid and just how well Dennis is doing at university – but when you were crowning?”

Dee tightens her hold on her baby, blinking away the dampness in her eyes.

“Jesus, I would’ve given anything to have her there again. She would’ve been berating me more than even Dennis does, calling me stupid and irresponsible and whorish, that I should’ve gotten a better doctor, that I should’ve done more squats, that I shouldn’t have gotten myself knocked up in the first place – but, god, she at least would’ve been there. That’s fucked up, isn’t it? That woman would get piss-drunk and tell me how much she hated me and how I ruined her entire goddamn life, and I still wanted her there with me. She gave me a childhood I still haven’t recovered from, if I’m being perfectly fucking honest, and I still wanted her there insulting me when I was having my own kid. I don’t want that for you. I want to give you a childhood you won’t have to recover from.”

The room is very, very quiet.

“I want to give you a childhood you won’t have to recover from,” Dee repeats, looking down at the now-sleeping baby in her arms. “If that doesn’t make you automatically fucked, then I don’t know what does.”


	8. Mac Makes A Proposition

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for frank descriptions of pregnancy, bowel movements, emotional manipulation, and everything else that comes hand in hand with Sunny.

I should write a book, Dee thinks, staring at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, about the shit they don’t tell you about pregnancy. On the topic of shit, this one does not want to come out. Her cooch still hasn’t quite managed to differentiate between her asshole and any other hole yet, so Dee's just kind of pushing and hoping for the best.

The best, in this case, involves: 1) Bebe staying asleep the entire time, 2) no stitches ripping, 3) some shit actually leaving her body.

Two out of three ain’t bad, but she is still constipated as hell. Worst comes to worst, there’s a bottle of prune juice sitting in her online shopping basket, just begging to be bought. Dee has barely bothered showering since she gave birth, never mind gone shopping. The guys bought her enough diapers to last through a zombie apocalypse.

No, that’s a lie. She’s managed to get her and Bebe both washed and dressed, in relatively clean clothing, and down the block to the nearest Starbucks every few days. It’d work better if she was a decade younger, but Dee is enjoying playing the cool hipster mom sitting in the sun with her baby as tiny as it is fashionable, drinking her decaf soya vanilla latte, and fanning herself with an Equity magazine. Being the age that she is, and covered in various baby fluids, it probably looks more depressing than anything else. It isn’t the coffee she’d normally have - before Bebe, she’d stuck with americanos, wary of the sugar and the price and the weight gain, that damn weight gain, to indulge in anything more. On days when her skin itches the most, she buys decaf espressos. Now, her body hurts so damn much that she thinks she deserves a treat in the form of a cup of sugar. Whatever. Two weeks down, two and a half months to go. She hasn’t been to the bar since Bebe got her name, mindful that the itch is so much more tempting to scratch now that she hasn’t got a baby guzzling away at her guts anymore.

It’s not as if any of the guys have come to visit her. Okay, Dennis has visited sporadically, barging in every few days armed with ginger beers and disdainful expressions and, God knows why, an ugly pink bunny for Bebe that one time, but only long enough for Dee to shove Bebe at him and collapse on her bed until the next time she screams for a feed. Then he’s off again, leaving her worse than alone and emptier than before.

Her phone goes off just as she’s beginning to make some progress. Well, she thinks she is. It’s still pretty hard to tell. It’s not that dignified to reach across to the sink to decline the call with her underwear around her ankles and her baby watching from her travel seat but, hey. She’d be the first to say that, out of the two of them, she definitely has the least dignity. Thank God it was on vibrate. She returns the phone to the sink and continues gripping the sides of the toilet seat. Bebe continues wiggling various tiny limbs and Dee continues begging various tiny muscles to relax.

Her phone lights up again. Either something real bad has happened or that’s not her sponsor. Could be both; she cannot physically remember the last time she texted – well, anyone. Except Dennis, demanding groceries. Anyone who knows she’s currently elbow deep in baby shit does not want anything to do with her, and those who don’t probably wouldn’t be texting her in the first place.

“You’re the only one that likes me, Bebe,” Dee says.

Bebe smacks her lips together.

“Okay, that’s aiming a bit too high. I don’t think you like anything but my tits. You definitely don’t like Dennis. Oh, you hate Dennis, don’t you, my big, beautiful girl?" God, her babytalk voice even annoys her. "You’re actually losing weight, which is kinda weird, but I’ve been told it’s normal. Let me tell you, Mommy is really looking forward to you being able to weigh yourself, cause then she can stop weighing herself. Makes me feel fourteen years old again.”

There’s a noise like someone whacking their fist on a door, multiple times. Dee almost falls off the toilet in shock, and either one or the other sets Bebe off; face crumpling and reddening as she begins to wail.

“God _dammit_.”

“Dee! Dee! Dee, are you in there?”

“Oh, I am so glad he’s not your father,” Dee tells the screaming baby before she picks up the once-again-buzzing phone with a, “ _What_?”

“Hey, Dee, could you let me in?” Mac blurts in her ear. “I really have no idea why you started locking your door, it’s so inconvenient.”

“Uh, maybe cause I don’t want you idiots barging into my apartment at every goddamn minute of the day,” Dee snaps back.

“Well, whatever, could you just come and open the door already,” Mac says. “I can literally hear Bebe screaming from here, _geez_ , are you a bad mother –”

There it is; the held breath between breaths, the respite before the screaming starts up again. “I’m a bit busy right now, okay? So if you could give me one second and maybe, I don’t know, a text saying you were gonna pop around –”

“I’ve called you three times!”

“Whatever,” Dee replies, holding her phone between her ear and her shoulder as she cleans up.

There’s a moment of silence on the other end. “Wait, are you taking a dump right now?”

“What?”

“I can hear toilet paper, and your voice really sounds like you’re in the bathroom – oh, my god, you are, aren’t you? That’s gross, Dee, why would you pick up the phone?”

“Because you’ve called me three times!” Dee shrieks, which does not help with the screaming baby situation in the slightest. “Okay, let me wash my hands and I will be there in two seconds. Can you wait that long? Can you be patient for two seconds?”

“I can be patient for two seconds!” Mac snaps. “But could you please hurry up, I’m getting pretty bored out here and –”

Dee hangs up the phone. “God, he’s annoying,” she tells Bebe as she washes her hands. “I wish _you_ could be patient for two seconds – okay, there we go, _there_ we go, come to Momma. Urgh, he better have a good reason for coming over.”

Bebe is instantly slightly mollified when Dee brings up her in close, which is something, at least. There’s something so goddamn satisfying about that; being able to soothe a tiny, helpless, distressed creature with only a kiss on the forehead. When Bebe isn’t crying, the moments when she’s just chilling in Dee’s arms and having a lil look at the world are some of the best parts of Dee’s day.

“Okay, so you’re a single mother,” Mac says as soon as Dee opens the door, barging into the flat past her.

“Oh, really? You don’t see me for almost a fortnight and you come round just to tell me that?” Dee tries to keep her voice light, she really goddamn does; even the slightest hint of a raised voice can send Bebe into hysterics – but, oh, it’s fucking hard, when she has this little scream perched under her chin just waiting to let rip.

“I’ve been thinking,” Mac tries.

“Eh, don’t hurt yourself.”

“That is trite and predictable and you know it,” Mac says, pointing a finger at her.

“Look, have you been thinking about ways in which you can help me raise this baby?” Dee says. “Otherwise I’m not interested.”

“I have, actually,” Mac says. “Look, you don’t know who the father is, right?”

“Oh, no, I have a pretty good idea who the father is.” Dee has spent the last fortnight of her life not doing much but looking at the thing – she’s got a pretty good guess.

“But you’re not gonna tell them?” Mac says.

“Nope.”

“You’re not gonna seek out the father of your first and only child and tell them they have a beautiful baby daughter,” he continues, sounding like a goddamn philosopher trying to argue his point, whatever the hell it is.

“Absolutely not.”

“Nor will you try and reconcile a romance with this man and at least attempt to raise your kid together as, like, a family unit.”

“Oh, god, no,” Dee says. “It wasn’t even a romance anyway, just a stupid one-night stand. Besides, we can barely stand each other. I’d have more luck romancing a stone.”

“And obviously no one else is gonna want to date you, never mind help raise your bastard child, because you’re gross and disgusting and pretty much unappealing in every form known to man.” He’s pacing as he walks, doing those arm gestures he does when revving himself up to do something he really does not want to do. “So I guess there’s only one thing for it.”

Mac starts lowering himself to the floor.

“Wait, what are you doing?”

Mac pauses, knee not quite yet on the ground. “Uh, I’m proposing, what does it look like I’m doing?

“You can’t propose to me,” Dee shrieks. “Don’t you dare – don’t you dare propose to me, stop that knee, stop that knee _right now_.”

“But I’m already halfway there!”

“Oh, my god, if I wasn’t holding a baby right now – look, just stand up, would you?” Dee snaps. “Stand up. _Up_. I cannot have a serious conversation with you whilst your eye-level with my tits, okay? Stand _up_.”

“Okay, fine,” he grumbles, pushing him back up to full-height. Dee can’t even look at him right now, all her body aches and oh, my god, she is going to rip his head off one day. “But can you please just hear me out on this one.”

“Oh, yeah, of course.” Sitting down on the couch is a complicated procedure of making sure she doesn’t collapse from her stomach muscles giving out on her, drop her baby, and tear anything – but, oh, it is so worth it when she’s finally down. Relaxing. Kind of. Mostly just reluctant to reverse the whole painful process just to rip his head off. “Let me guess – family values going down the train, parental roles needing to be filled, and, boom, I’ve just given my new-born full-blown AIDs. That just about cover it?”

Mac flounders. “Yes, how did you know –”

“Because the last time we co-parented, you were useless as shit when it came to actually parenting.” Bebe starts squirming and fussing in her arms, and Dee strokes her fat little cheek. “Remember Dumpster Baby?”

“I was the dad!” Mac shoots back. Bebe’s mouth puckers, turning towards Dee’s finger. “And everyone knows dads don’t have to do a thing until either their son is old enough to play baseball or until a boy so much as looks as their precious baby girl. It’s a proven system as old as humanity –”

“Uh, and so is finding an ideal mate.” Dee can get out her tit one-handed now, _god_ , she is good at this. “If you’re trying to make a pitch, make a goddamn pitch. Tell me what you can offer as a father and a husband – for example, not wanting to vomit every time I feed my baby.”

Mac keeps his eyes trained on the ceiling, which is absolutely fine by her. “Uh, I don’t know, strong, Christian family values?”

“And yet you were a key component in your best friend’s marriage breaking down.” It’s so much easier to just sit and watch her when no one else is looking. “How strange.”

Mac sends her a filthy glare. “Okay, a stable, religious home environment , then.”

“The friend you’ve been living with for the last two decades, and it really has to be voluntarily by this point,” Dee continues as if he hadn't spoken. “You’re really selling yourself here, Mac.”

Mac’s jaw works furiously as he tries – and fails – not to growl. “A committed, reliable partner –”

“Tell me something that you’ve been committed to for more than a week since high school,” Dee says. “And it can’t be Charlie, Dennis, or Jesus.”

“Financial security?” 

Dee snorts. _Wow,_ is it weird to do that with a baby at your breast. “Frank would make a better husband than you in that regard.”

“Bebe needs a dad!” Mac explodes. “And you clearly need help –”

“I don’t need your help, Mac, I have this shit in the bag,” Dee says, gesturing at the whole business below her neck. “All I need to do is nurse, clothe, bathe, and soothe on constant repeat. I know what she needs. I know what to try. It’s tiring as fuck and, oh my god, is it _boring_ , but it’s simple. I barely have to think about it at this point. Leave calling me a shit mother until the thing learns to talk and then never stops talking. Why do you care so much about her, anyway? You’ve only met her once – twice, if you include your stupid baby-naming ceremony. Even then, you barely acknowledged her. She isn’t even your kid. So why do you now give two shits about if she has a dad or not?”

“Dennis said –”

“Oh, great, that’s just great.” Honestly, sometimes she thinks Mac acts according to Dennis’ whims more than she does for those of her new-born. “What did Dennis say?”

“He says that you’ve been struggling.”

Hey, Bebe, your uncle’s a bastard, Dee thinks. “Bullshit.”

“He says that every time he comes over, you immediately pass out on the couch and he’s getting kinda convinced that you’ll start automatically doing that every time he sees you, like some kinda Pavlov’s dog type situation.”

Bebe keeps sucking away, because she can understand neither mental nor actual communication. “I mean, he is pretty boring, I kinda want to fall asleep every time he opens his mouth anyway.”

Mac hovers for a moment. “He’s also bugged the house while you were sleeping so he can time how long it takes you to shut Bebe up when she starts crying.”

So that’s why Dennis bought Bebe that ugly pink bunny. “Oh, the _bastard_.”

“And sometimes in the evening she can literally be crying for hours which, I mean, I know you’re a new mom and all, but it has been two weeks,” Mac says. “You should really be doing a bit better than that by now.”

“It’s the witching hour!” Dee explodes, and great, Bebe slips off and begins screwing up her face again. Thanks, Mac.

“Why the hell are you raising your baby to be a witch?” Mac explodes right back. “Oh, great, she’s screaming again. What was that you were saying about being a great mother again?”

“Shut up.” He’s barely even there anymore to Dee, everything is just this stupid baby and this stupid baby alone, the screams crawling at her brain, the milk leaking down her chest as she holds her close and makes pathetic little shushing noises.

“See, this is why you need me,” Mac continues, seemingly under the impression that he is still on Dee’s radar. “She needs a strong, authoritative, male figure in her life to keep her quiet and submissive.”

“You can’t make my baby quiet and submissive!” The screams are trailing off into yawns, her little mouth stretching as wide as it can go, and Dee rocks and rocks and rocks until her arms are aching. “That’s not how babies work!”

“It would be nice, though, wouldn’t it?”

Dee looks back down at the ball of chub in her arms and the body that isn’t her body and wonders if she didn’t make the biggest mistake of her life. “Yeah, it kinda would.”

“So can I at least try to be the father of your baby?”

Mac’s arms are wide, open and expectant. Dee’s cheekbones ache.

“Fine. But I’ve got terms and agreements.”

Mac instantly stops celebrating. “Oh, come on.”

“I’m serious. If you wanna try and be the dad of this baby, you’ve gotta be a modern dad,” Dee says. “You gotta bathe. You gotta bottle feed. You gotta try and get this baby to sleep every single night.”

Mac makes another strangled noise. “Oh, come _on_.”

Dee grins. “You gotta change diapers.”

“No, no, no,” Mac says. “I am not doing that. There is no way in hell I am changing diapers.”

“Then there is no way in hell you’re being the father of this baby.”

“Goddammit.” He throws himself down onto the couch next to her. He shifts and fidgets, his jaw as tense as anything. Dee closes her eyes and smells her baby’s head. “Fine, I’ll change some goddammit diapers.”

“Awesome,” Dee says, “Here you go,” and hands him the thing before he can say otherwise. “Congrats, you’re a father, I’m gonna go take a nap.”

“What?” Mac doesn’t even look at Bebe as he begins rocking her, instead watching Dee struggle back to her feet, _god_ , her abs are so fucked. “You can’t just dump this thing on me!”

“For the sake of the baby, I’m gonna need some time to sleep.” Dee stands, rolling her shoulders, trying to ease the weight, the ache, in her shoulders and chest and back, and, oh, is she enjoying _this_. Best thing since the sushi she had on the second day post-birth. “Consider it a trial run cause, if we’re gonna raise Bianca together, it’s important to me that you can look after her by yourself. So, if you can keep my baby alive for, I don’t know, two months, I’ll consider your offer.”

Mac looks increasingly unhappy the more seconds of baby-holding tick by. “Two weeks.”

“A month.”

“Deal.” The knowledge that her baby is asleep in someone else’s arms, and Dee’s body is collapsing in on her. The centre of the earth? Fuck that. Gravity is now centred on her bed – her big, baby-free bed, as stained as it is with milk and spots of milk and the illusion of solitude.

“So, wait, you’re just gonna leave me with her?”

“You bet,” Dee replies, closing the doors behind her and collapsing face-first onto her bed.

Oh god.

Oh, _god_ , that hurt.

There’s no screaming from the living room, at least, as Dee finds the cleanest pillow to lay her head on and the second cleanest pillow to prop under her stomach. The room is still and there’s a breeze through the open window and there’s no baby with quiet breaths like a freight train next to her and, honestly? It’s awful. It’s always fucking awful. Okay, no, with Dennis it’s fine. He probably sees her as some kind of de facto Reynolds heir and therefore is pretty much set on keeping her safe and happy. He isn’t going to forget to support her neck or drop her or just straight-up get bored and stroll right out of the apartment – or, god forbid, leave the apartment, baby in tow, without telling Dee. At least, Dee presumes not. The longest she’s been able to pass out for is half an hour and, judging by how long it takes her to get them both organised with two weeks practise, Dennis wouldn’t be halfway down the elevator by the time that half an hour’s up.

The worst that can happen with Dennis is that he rearranges the entire contents of apartment and then spends another half an hour berating her for her entire life being a mess and how now that she has a stupid baby he has to do everything for her and blah blah blah. If he starts freaking out because he can’t control Bebe and manipulate her into doing what he wants because, uh, she’s two weeks old and doesn’t understand any form of communication other than having a nipple put in her mouth, it’s normally because the solution to her squalling is the one thing he can’t offer her (see: previous). And then he leaves, as if the world is still going on outside. But Mac?

Fuck it.

He’s an adult.

He wants to play at being a dad, let him play. In the meantime, Dee’s gonna get some beauty sleep.

The TV turns on in the living room, volume low. Dee settles further into her bed and, when it comes, the sleep cannot be short and long enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Multiple references to The Gang Finds a Dumpster Baby cause why not.


	9. Breastfeeding: Milking It For All It's Worth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dennis and Dee cause a scene in your local department store, with surprisingly successful results.
> 
> Dee POV. Warning for canon-typical sexism, racism, jokes about Dennis/Dee, and general awfulness.

“I can’t believe you’ve dragged me to this place, Dee. Me! Of all people! In a baby store! Again! I mean, couldn’t you have brought Mac or something? Didn’t you say he was being your baby daddy for the month? Which is a really stupid idea, by the way, we both know you’re getting his hopes up for absolutely no reason. Which is kind of cruel, if you think about it. But, no, you’ve decided that it’s me who needs to come with you to buy some new baby clothes – and how many bodysuits does one baby need anyway? How quickly does this thing grow? Cause it looks like she’s grown, what, an inch and a half? In three months?”

“About that much, yeah.”

Dee strokes her head, watches her marvel at the world from the safety of her sling. It took a while for Dee to suss it out, especially with no one to help her wrap it round her body, but, as soon as she figured it out, it was _awesome_. Tiny warm baby snuggled against her, like, 24/7? Fucking great.

“And, yeah, okay, I know, I’m the best driver, way better driver than Mac or Charlie or, Jesus, Frank – never, ever let Bebe go in the car with Frank," Dennis continues. "I mean, it’s fine if it’s just you, of course, except preferably don’t because, good God, we don’t want to leave her fatherless _and_ motherless – whatever. Point is, just because I’m the best driver, doesn’t mean I always have to be the one who drives you two everywhere. I mean, can’t you take the bus? Actually, no, don’t take the bus. The only people who take the bus are college drop-outs, single moms, and bottle blondes. It’s way too trashy. I mean, I guess you tick two-thirds of the boxes, three-thirds if you count the fact that I know for certain you get highlights put in."

Okay, not so great when she shits or screams, but she hasn’t started on solids yet so most of her shits still smell like popcorn, for reasons Dee can’t quite understand, and she screams a whole lot less when snuggled against her like that. It seems that all babies want is for you to recreate the exact environment of the womb. The sling seems to do that well enough for Bebe to be happy maybe, like, half of the time, with the added plus of her being able to stare at whatever the fuck she wants, whether it be Mac, Charlie, Dee, or their current surroundings of the children’s section of Dillard’s.

“Urgh, I hate going out with Bebe. Are all moms this judgemental of new moms? Is that, like, a law or something? You’re only allowed to leave the hospital if you sign a bit of paper saying, yes, I will judge every single new mom I come across in public like the massive bitch I am? Unless they gave birth at home, of course, in some weird all-natural birth involving sandalwood and essential oils, in which case they don’t need to sign anything because they’re already weird hippies and I don’t trust them. I can feel the glares radiating off of people, especially cause of the sling. I mean, _really_ , Dee. Do you really have to wear the sling? You look like you were raised in an African village. You look like you’re still pregnant, except your uterus has swapped places with your lungs. And what’s with the polka dots, anyway?”

“What’s wrong with the polka dots?” Dee says. “I think they’re pretty.”

“No, Dee, they’re not _pretty_ ,” Dennis snaps. “They’re childish. Insanely childish. There’s only one sort of person in the world who can get away with wearing polka dots, and you’re practically suffocating her. Even then, I would never, ever let you buy her something with polka dots on it so you can put that down now. And that. What about this? This has bunnies on it, that’s kinda cute. Yeah, get this one. Okay, quick question; why does this one have llamas on it? What the hell kind of person would get their baby girl clothes with llamas on them?”

“I don’t know, Dennis,” Dee says, and she’s really just humoring him, at this point. He’s been lecturing her for the last half an hour, either not realising or not caring that she’s basically been ignoring him this entire time. “People who really like llamas, I guess.”

“Well, we’re not getting them,” Dennis says. “It’s even worse because neither of us are wearing wedding rings – I mean, it’s worst for you, of course, being thirty-six with a three-month-old baby and not having a clue who the father is, never mind being married to him – but I don’t want people to be looking at me and thinking that. I don’t want people looking at me and thinking, oh, look, what a handsome father and his beautiful baby and his unfortunately less-than-average partner with whom it must have been an accident. I mean, way less than average, Dee. Especially one who still hasn’t shifted all the baby weight.”

“Hey!”

Dennis pulls a very punchable face. “I know you only gave birth a couple months ago, but it’s just starting to get embarrassing now. You’re almost as fat as Mac is, and, man, is he getting fat. You should see our fridge at the moment. That man guzzles more burritos than your baby guzzles milk.”

On the topic of guzzling, Bebe has begun to squirm a lot more in her sling, face scrunched in the way that forebodes a screaming fit if she doesn't act quick.

“So, anyway, not only does it look like I’m in a relationship with a woman who is so below my league, but it also looks like I’m not even married to her. What sort of man does that make me look like, Dee? Tell me, what sort of man? A shameful one, that’s what. A shameful man in Dillard’s and, I mean, really, is there anywhere else worse in the world where man could look shameful? No! I think not!”

Dee strokes her chubby little cheek with her finger and, yep, that’s a hungry baby right there.

“It’d be even worse if they figure out we’re siblings with their judgemental all-seeing mommy eyes. First, it means they realise who I share genetic material with which is just too horrible for words. Especially if they’re, like, hot, single MILFs who I could potentially strike up some kind of rapport with, me using how much I care for my poor, struggling sister and her beautiful, fatherless baby girl as a way to demonstrate value – because, then, who would want to potentially combine genetic material, if you catch my drift, with a man who shares genetic material with you? Who, Dee? Who?”

It takes a bit of rearranging in the sling, but it’s so much easier once she’d spied a seat to help make the process a little easier. It would so help if Dennis shut the fuck up for a second, though.

“Besides, it even begins to look kind of sad when you think about it closely. Instead of, you know, going out in the world, actually making good use of my youth and good looks, or even traipsing around Dillard’s with my _actual_ wife and my _actual_ daughter, I’m accompanying my sister and her happy accident around. And what do I get out of this, Dee? What? Absolutely nothing, that’s what!”

She thinks about getting up again as Bebe feeds, she really does, but Dennis is just going on and on and on and on and, really, she needs a sit down. She needs a hell of a sit down.

“Oh, great. You’ve parked your fat ass again. Great. Isn’t the point of the sling that you’re able to walk about while carrying her and feeding her?”

“Oh, I don’t care, this feels so good,” Dee moans, as she slumps as much as she can in her seat. Oh, her feet. Oh, her poor feet. Her poor body. This really does feel so good.

“Fine. Whatever. I don’t care either,” Dennis says, practically throwing his hands into the air in his frustration. “I’ll go shopping by myself, then. Great. This is great. Don’t move.”

“Oh, I won’t.”

Dee sits there for a while. The sling does this thing where part of it is snuggling Bebe’s face and it’s just way too cute, so it’s hardly a chore, especially whenever Bebe looks up at her. She has her dad’s eyes, which is a bit weird, but whatever. She’s started growing out of the new-born stage and is becoming more of a proper baby size now which kinda sucks so Dee’s pretty content continuing to stare at her for a while longer while she’s still this small.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but you can’t do that here.”

“Mm?” Ha, like any man thinks they can have her full attention when she has a titload of baby. “Oh, sorry, was I not supposed to sit on this? Is it for sale or something?”

“No, ma’am, I didn’t mean that,” continues the man, who turns out to be a clean-cut employee with a nametag she can’t be assed to read. “You’re going to have to cover your baby up.”

“Oh, no no no, she hates being covered up while she's feeding.” God, this is so relaxing. They’re even playing nice plinky-plonky music, Dee wishes she could nurse here all the time. “You put a scarf over her face and she freaks out. The sling is kind of the middle ground, sort of a compromise we’ve come up with, haven’t we, Bebe?”

“No, I meant you’ll either need to cover up or I’ll have to ask you to move to one of our feeding facilities where you might feel more comfortable.”

Never mind.

“Uh, if you wanna yank this baby from my chest, be my guest,” Dee says. “But, until then, I’m perfectly comfortable here, thanks.”

“Ma’am –”

“Hey, quick question,” Dee interrupts. “Is there something inappropriate about me feeding my baby? Cause there’s not. It’s feeding a goddamn baby, that’s literally it.”

“All I’m asking, ma’am, is that you –” the asshole says.

“Cover up? Is that it? Is that what you want me to do, cover up?”

The man nods and attempts to speak again and, oh, that is when Dee really loses it.

“Do you know how hard it is to cover up and feed a baby at the same time? You try wrangle a squishy baby into a comfortable position whilst balancing a blanket on your shoulder whilst trying to still see what the hell you’re doing to get the the stupid thing latched properly. Cause it’s not easy! It’s not easy! I wouldn’t want to eat with a blanket over my head, would you?”

“Ma’am, I understand completely –” he tries again.

“Oh, do you? Do you? Cause it doesn’t look like it. Doesn’t sound like it either,” Dee snaps. “Besides, nothing screams ‘hey, I’m breastfeeding over here!’ like having a blanket over me, you idiot.”

“If you don’t want to cover up, there’s always the option of moving to one of our feeding facilities,” the employee says, clearly trying to keep his temper under wraps and, damn, Dee really needs to calm down. That’s one good thing about having a baby; if it’s attached directly to your boobs, you really have no other option but to try and chill the fuck out about certain things.

“Well, if you’ll just give me, oh, I don’t know, another quarter of an hour or so to finish up on this side, I’ll go to your stupid feeding facility.”

“Sorry, is something the matter here?”

“Oh, Dennis, thank God you’re here,” Dee says, as he brings the still-barely-full cart to a stop next to her. “This man here has been demanding I leave the store and has been saying the most horrible things for doing nothing but feed – oh. Great. That's just fantastic.”

Bebe, having detached, immediately starts squawking, wriggling against her chest in a way that kind of feels like she did whilst in her stomach, but a lot less weird and a lot less pleasant.

“Excuse me?” Dennis turns on the employee, mood switching from mildly concerned to bubbling with rage in the blink of an eye as Bebe literally starts kicking up a fuss. “This lady, sir, is in the midst of one of the beautiful acts on Earth! The sacred bond between mother and child!”

“I’m sorry, are you two together?” the employee says.

“Yes, yes, we are!” Dennis snaps, which, if you think about it, is only a lie depending on what definition of together you’re using. “And we are both equally outraged at this kind of behaviour! Years, we’ve been coming to this store, years, and we have never experienced this kind of treatment from any of your employees.”

“All I’m asking, sir, is that your wife –”

“Oh, no, we’re not married,” Dee jumps in.

“Shut up, Dee,” Dennis says.  “Is there something inappropriate about her feeding her baby here?” 

“That’s exactly what I said!” Dee butts in.

“Shut _up,_ Dee," Dennis says. "Let me elaborate, good sir: is there something inappropriate about her feeding her baby in here, your store, which displays huge advertisements featuring women in far less clothing – some in bras which are practically transparent, even – and showing off far more skin than Dee here ever could whilst feeding her baby? Can’t you see the irony, sir? Can’t you see it?”

Dennis is practically yelling in the employee’s face now, matching Bebe volume for volume: in doing so attracting over a manager, better dressed and even more clean-cut than the asshole they’re currently dealing with.

“I’m sorry, is there something the matter here?” he asks.

“Yes, there’s something the matter!” Dennis turns on the manager instead, now, and this would be so great if Dee didn’t have a baby screaming fit to burst on her chest. “Your employee here has been treating us absolutely horrendously, demanding we leave the store for simply feeding a baby, upsetting said baby and traumatising this poor mother here in the process.”

“Yeah, I’m super traumatised,” Dee adds. “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to breastfeed in public again.”

“Sir, our policy is –” the manager tries.

“I don’t give a shit what your policy is!” Dennis yells. “This is outrageous! Completely unacceptable! I demand compensation for the unjust manner in which we have been treated today or I will write a post on Facebook about it!”

The two employees turn to each other.

 _Bingo_.

*

“Holy shit, fifty bucks of free stuff,” Dee says. “Can you believe it? This is gonna last me months.”

“How many places is that now?” Dennis asks, pushing the cart filled with various bodysuits, booties, and more. There’s even a couple mega packs of diapers in that thing.

“We’ve done Dillard’s, Mothercare, and Babies’R’Us now,” Dee says, the owner of lots of cute new clothes sleeping soundly once again in her sling.

“ _Nice_ ,” Dennis says, holding his hand up for a high-five which Dee loudly accepts.

“God, I love breastfeeding and causing moral outrage,” she says. “See, you did get something out of traipsing around Dillard’s with me after all.”

“Shut up, Dee,” Dennis says. So much for that, then. “So, what d’you wanna do now? Wanna see if we can cause some outrage at Chick-fil-A?”

“Oh, absolutely,” she replies. “Hope baby girl’s hungry by then.”

“Oh, she will be,” Dennis says, pushing the cart towards his car. “She will be.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slight delay in updating, but I was wrangling with a Mac POV chapter that would just not cooperate so I ended up writing this instead. Also, a tornado. An an earthquake. And two hospitalised uncles. These past couple of months have been buckwild.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed this and the newest eps of Sunny! I adored the Gang Escapes.


	10. The Waitress Is Getting Baby-Crazy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dee POV. Mild warning for violent thoughts due to post-partum depression.

There are many worst things about having a baby. The first is probably sleep. Actually, the first thing is definitely sleep – or, more accurately, the absolute fucking lack of it. Dee doesn’t think she has slept for more than four hours at a time since the first night the thing was out of her body and sleeping in the hospital nursery far, far away from her hospital bed. Even four hours is generous, what with the time it takes to actually fall back asleep once she’s calmed the thing down. And sleep deprivation is a bitch, it’s a real bitch. She thought it was a bitch before when it made her grumpy and irritable and want to drink the entire contents of the bar and/or rip her brother’s head of its shoulders. But now – now? Now she is all those things, wants all those things, except now she can’t drink – she hasn’t, she _hasn’t_ , she’ll swear on her mom’s goddamn grave that she hasn’t (yet, a small voice in her head says, yet) – and now she’s in charge of a tiny human person’s life.

The person who came up with using sleep deprivation as a method of torture must have been a parent, that’s all Dee is gonna say on the topic. Except, fuck that, she’s exhausted and is gonna complain about it for the next eighteen years.

The second worst thing is jealousy – and, yes, she does know about that, so you can shut the fuck up, Dennis. She’s jealous, alright, she can admit that – but she’s not jealous of other women. She’s not jealous of other women and their husbands and their wonderfully thin post-baby bodies and their homes with more than once bedroom and definitely not their stupid, beautiful babies because there’s only one baby in the world that Dee doesn’t hate and that’s her own; at least, most of the time.

No, no, no, Dee’s jealous of her old self. Her past self. Her past self who could have a glass of wine in the evening and not worry about it. Her past self who could drink a pack of beers with the guys. Her past self who could start drinking at breakfast and basically never, ever, ever stop. But, no, now she’s got a stupid baby who is so reliant on her not drinking for, you know, food and general safety, and all of her friends are basically alcoholics. So, yeah, Dee’s jealous. Dee’s incredibly jealous, in fact, but it’s fine because none of them are the moms of a beautiful aby they only sort of hate. So that’s the second worst thing about being a mom in Dee’s book.

“Oh, cute baby,” an irritatingly familiar voice says.

And that’s the third worst thing.

Dee’s just having a perfectly normal day, taking her baby to the park, because who knows how it’s gonna be before Philly is under a blanket of snow and it’s inadvisable to take a tiny baby to the park, and someone does that. _That_. Why does everyone call her baby cute? What about – what a nice bone structure your baby has, she must have inherited it from her mom. What cute blonde hair your baby has, she must have inherited that from her mom, too. Or perhaps even a compliment to the mom. Dee looks nice. Dee looks cute today. She even had a shower whilst her baby screamed in her cot because it has no concept of object permanence and everything. Dee would prefer it if she was complimented instead of the tiny human she made. Like, wow, you made this tiny human? And only four months ago? You’re looking so good for it! Or even, “Wow, clean baby!” because this baby is _clean_. Clean! This baby is never clean! But, no, today Bebe has clean hair, a currently clean diaper, and she hasn’t spit up all over her bodysuit yet. Even her pram is clean. All in all, there are way better things to say than that she’s cute. Not that she isn’t cute because Dee thinks she may have lucked out on the cutest and most annoying baby in the whole of Philly, but still. God, where does she know that voice from?

“Yeah, people keep on saying that but I’m just not seeing it,” Dee replies, turning from the pram to confront the familiar voice; the Waitress shrieks.

“Oh, my god, Dee! You have a baby?” she says and, really, her and Charlie are made for each other, speaking at frequencies no other humans can understand. “Oh my god, did you steal another baby?”

“No! No, why do people keep on saying that – I made this baby,” Dee snaps, which is probably the fourth worst thing about her having a baby; people looking from her daughter that she spent nine months making to her and thinking, _nah_. That woman can’t have possibly made this thing; clearly, she must have stolen it. “Why do people keep on thinking that I can’t possibly be a mother?”

“Well, you don’t exactly have the temperament for it,” the Waitress says, scathingly, readjusting the bag on her shoulder.

“Wow, coming up to a new mom and saying that she’s destined to be shit at it,” Dee replies. “That’s low, even for you.”

“Oh, who are you kidding?” she fires right back, all her initial glow gone. “You’re the last woman on Earth who should be a mom.”

“Bullshit. There literally isn’t a woman on Earth who has the temperament to be a mom,” Dee says. “Show me a woman who loves being a mom and I will hack into her brain and show you every single time she hasn’t wanted to smash her baby’s head against the wall.”

Now that shuts her up. The Waitress stares, gape-mouthed, as Dee tries not to look at her, at her baby, at anything. “Dee, how can you say something like that?”

“Easily,” Dee lies. “And with the knowledge that I probably won’t actually do it. Look, what do you want? Why are you talking to me? I’m pretty busy.”

The Waitress scoffs, very obviously breaking eye contact with her. Bebe finally gets it in her head to acknowledge this New Person and gargles in her general direction, before reoccupying herself with just how very interesting her fat little fists are. Now, Dee remembers learning about seven levels of energy in her acting classes: 1 is you’re super lazy and got no energy whatsoever, 2 is you’ve kind of got a bit of energy but not really, all the way up to 6 where you’re so full of energy you’re basically sprinting around the place like a hyperactive kid whose mom would love nothing more than to stick him on Adderall. Charlie is a constant 6. Mac used to be a solid 5 but he’s started slipping down to almost a 3 recently. On first glance, Dennis is a 3 but, if you look properly, he’s actually incredibly tense at all times, full of energy just waiting to explode at any moment, which puts him down as a sure 7.

“Oh, my god.”

Now, most women, when they approach Dee about her baby, are hovering at about a 4 when they coo at the tiny person she made, which is fine, that’s fine. They gain energy from her infantile energy as she drains it from her mother. However, the Waitress – the _Waitress_ – she was hovering at about 2 but, at the first acknowledgement of her presence, she shot straight up to a 7 whilst doing nothing more than readjusting her bag again.

“Oh. My God. You like babies, don’t you?”

The Waitress scoffs again.

“Oh, you love babies, you really love babies, don’t you,” Dee continues, “You’re accusing me of stealing a baby when you want nothing more than to steal one yourself, _fuck_ , this is funny –”

She finally breaks, blurting, “Please don’t tell Charlie,” she’s practically begging, this is the best thing that’s happened to Dee in months.

“What? No, of course I’m not gonna tell Charlie,” Dee scoffs back in turn. Like she would do that. She’s had both ears talked off by him talking about the Waitress enough over the last decade as it is, never mind without this new bit of juicy gossip about her heretofore unknown baby obsession, Jesus. “Why would I tell Charlie?”

“Cause he might use the fact that I like babies to try and manipulate me in some way, like he uses every single bit of knowledge about me,” the Waitress says. “Which is a lot, at this point.”

“Yeah, that does sound like Charlie,” Dee says, after a beat. “Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me.”

“Thank you,” the Waitress says. “I think that’s the first nice thing you’ve ever done for me.”

“Meh.” Bebe has started trying to pull her booties off, so Dee focuses on that, instead of the Waitress getting all emotional and stuff. “Don’t hold your breath for a second thing. Hey, you wanna hold her?”

Her face lights up. “Can I?”

“Yeah, why not?” Dee says, lifting her from her pram once she’s got her booties securely back on. “She isn’t cranky, she isn’t asleep. She might appreciate a new set of arms. If she screams, it’s your fault.”

“I don’t know about this,” the Waitress says. “I’m afraid I’ll drop her.”

“You’re not gonna drop her,” Dee scoffs, her daughter settling her arms. “See, it’s literally this easy. If Mac can do it, you can do it.”

“Is it okay if I sit down?” she says. “I’m really worried I’ll drop her.”

“What are you, five? Alright, alright.” Dee waits until the Waitress has got herself good and sat down before she promptly deposits Bebe on her waiting lap. “She’s old enough now that you don’t have to worry about her head, but young enough that she generally stays wherever you’ve plonked her.”

“Not crawling yet?” The glow is back in the Waitress, as she’d had earlier, so _that’s_ what it was. Her eyes, already super big, are wide as hell, focused entirely on the tiny person in her lap.

“Not yet, thank God.” Normally, Dee’s head would be screaming, screaming, _screaming_ at the fact that someone else is holding her baby, and there’s an inkling of that scratching at some corner of her brain, but it’s fine. It’s _fine._

“What’s her name?” Her arm position is a bit awkward as she adjusts the baby on her lap, gets used to her weight and wiggly body but she seems, weirdly enough, emotionally comfortable.

“Be – Bianca.” That’s why it’s not that bad, Dee thinks. Most of the time the guys hold her like it’s some kind of duty or, in Charlie’s case, like she’s some new endless source of entertainment.

“Bibianca?” the Waitress repeats. “Is that, like, Hispanic or something?”

“No, no, her name’s Bianca, it’s just that the guys all like to call her Bebe, I have no idea why,” Dee explains, as flippantly as she can manage.

“Oh, Bebe’s an adorable name,” the Waitress coos. Thank god Bebe is not being fussy, just grabbing onto the dangly bits of fabric on the Waitress’ top to the delight of the both. “Who came up with it?”

“Charlie,” Dee says, and the Waitress immediately draws back slightly.

“Bianca it is, then. Hello, Bianca.” The Waitress smiles. It’s the first time Dee thinks she’s ever seen a proper smile on her face. “My name’s –”

Dee’s phone begins to ring as the Waitress gives her daughter her name. Like Bebe’s gonna remember it; she can’t even call her own mommy ‘mommy’ yet. Huh. Speak of the devil.

“Shut up for a second,” Dee says. “What is it, Charlie?”

The Waitress falls silent as Charlie starts rambling in her ear about the latest stupid scheme Mac and he have concocted, and how they might need a woman to pull it off, and, like, she wouldn’t normally be their first choice, ideally, but the Waitress isn’t picking up his calls and –

“Oh, she isn’t? How weird,” Dee says. The Waitress is stroking Bebe’s hair now, in small, soft movements. Dee waves a finger between her and the phone, mouthing, “He’s talking about you.”

“Wait, is someone there with you?” Charlie asks.

“Yes, Charlie, there is,” Dee says; the Waitress’ freezes, unable to fight or flight with a baby on her lap. “Someone who you love and who you’d die for and is four months old. Geez, Charlie, can you shut up about the Waitress, please? For once?”

“Can you say hi to Bebe for me?” is his only response.

“Yeah, alright,” Dee says, moving the phone from her ear. “Bianca, Charlie says hi.”

Bebe ignores her in favor of the dangly bits on the Waitress’ top.

“What did she say?” Charlie says.

“She ignored you.”

“Whatever. You coming or what?”

“Is there space for a baby in your plan?” Dee asks, already knowing the answer.

“Uh, no, not really,” Charlie says.

“Then you know my answer,” Dee replies, not even bothering to try hear his protests. “I’ve told you time and time again, Charlie, I don’t have anyone to look after the stupid thing so, unless you can find me a babysitter that you four don’t scare away by flirting with her or threatening her or turning up my apartment with a key which you still have not given me and trying to steal my baby, it’s a no! So, bye, Charlie, bye, bye!”

She hangs up on him. Another aspect of the second worst thing. Turns out she hates being left out of their shenanigans more than she hates being involved in them, who’d’ve thought?

“Don’t scare me like that,” the Waitress says after a moment. “I thought I was gonna have a heart attack, you can’t just almost tell Charlie that you’re hanging out with me.”

“Uh, technically it’s you who’s hanging out with me,” Dee tells her. “And, besides, he probably wouldn’t believe me anyway.”

“Uh, yeah, he would,” the Waitress says like Dee’s an idiot. “It’s Charlie. He’s so obsessed with me that he’d believe anything.”

“Whatever,” Dee says. “Are you done with holding my baby or what?”

“Oh, yeah, uh –”

The Waitress flounders, as unsure how to pass Bebe back over to her mom as she is unwilling. Dee doesn’t even bother trying to talk her through it, just scoops her back into her arms like she has done so, so many times over the past four months. The Waitress looks strangely empty without the baby, pulling her lap onto her bag as some meagre replacement.

“So, uh, what are your living arrangements at the moment?” Dee asks, settling her daughter back in her lap, enjoying her warmth.

“Oh, so shit,” the Waitress replies immediately. “Just, like, the nastiest apartment. It’s tiny, there’s literally mold everywhere, no matter how much I try scrub it down – and, like, the neighbors are awful. I can barely even play music without the people in the apartment both above and below me banging on the ceiling or floor to try and get me to shut up. Like, I haven’t even met any of them. Fortunately, they’re pretty quiet, I think it’s mostly potheads who just want quiet places to zone out in, you know? I’ve bumped into some of the people on my floor a couple times but only while they’ve all been practically black-out drunk, which,” she hisses air through her teeth, eyes just that bit dilated, “is really, really bad – at least, for me, cause, you know, don’t wanna be tempted to fall back off the wagon and all that –”

“Wait, you’re sober again?” Dee interrupts, and she smiles weakly.

“Yeah, I am, haven’t had a drop for the last nine months.” She doesn’t seem that psyched about it, which, duh. “Gonna go get my chip tonight, it’s pretty exciting. I mean, not really, cause it’s, like, the third time I’ve got it, but whatever. It’s still an achievement.”

“Oh, yeah, totally,” Dee says. “I got mine a couple weeks ago, had to stop when I found out I was pregnant. Gotta say, they make great toys for Bebe.”

“I thought you didn’t like the name Bebe,” the Waitress says, before, “Wait, first you got pregnant, now you got sober?”

“Okay, first of all, I got sober ten months ago,” Dee snaps, god, like the Waitress has any moral authority over her state of sobriety, no matter how bullshit she finds the whole thing. “Second of all, you literally saw me when I was four, five months pregnant. This really shouldn’t be that much of a surprise to you.”

“You dumped dirty dishwater on my head,” the Waitress shoots back. “I was a little bit preoccupied.”

“Oh, yeah, I’d forgotten about that,” Dee replies. “God, that was funny.”

“No, Dee, it was not funny,” she snaps. “I never even got my five hundred dollars in the end.”

“Wait, you actually believed that Frank would give you five hundred dollars?” Dee asks. “Man, you are gullible.”

“Look, if you haven’t gotten anything else nice to say to me –” the Waitress says, rising from her seat.

“No, no, no, stay, stay, stay,” Dee says, waving for her to sit back down which she only half obeys. “You’re the first person I’ve had a proper conversation with in the past four months that isn’t the gang, a doctor, or Gail the Snail.”

“That’s really sad, Dee,” the Waitress says, like she is not the saddest woman in the world. “Wait, who’s Gail the Snail?”

“Eh, doesn’t matter,” Dee replies, waving that aside, too. “Point is, I’m a new, single mom without a babysitter, and you’re a woman so desperate that you’d take your top off for five-hundred dollars.”

“I would _not_ –”

“Shut up, I literally couldn’t care less,” Dee interrupts. “What I’m saying is that, if you fancy making a bit of cash, you can always watch her for a couple hours.”

Dee watches the journey, the battle between the adoration of the daughter and the animosity of the mother, play out on her features. “How much?”

“Ten dollars an hour.”

“Fifteen dollars.”

“Ten dollars.”

“Fifteen dollars.”

“Five dollars.

“Fine, ten dollars,” the Waitress snaps, irritation thrumming through her whole, drawn-in posture. “And I’m only looking after her in your apartment.”

Bingo. “I can cope with that,” Dee says. “Saves having to lug all her stuff round to yours and, believe me, she has a lot of stuff.”

“And you don’t tell Charlie,” she adds. “Or Dennis, or any of your stupid gang.”

“What, like I’d admit to having you looking after my bastard child,” Dee scoffs. “So, we got a deal?”

“Yeah, Dee, we have a deal.” The Waitress shifts where she stands, looking at her expectantly. “So?”

“What?”

“Are you gonna ask me for my number?”

“Oh, right, yeah.” Dee reaches back into her baby-bursting bag for her phone and hands it, unlocked, to the Waitress. When she hands it back, her brain draws a blank on the name she’s inserted. “Yeah, I’m gonna have to change that.”

She sighs. “Okay, but don’t change it to the Waitress. Even you’re not that stupid.”

“I’ll put it as the Babysitter?” Dee offers.

“Fine.”

“I’ll call you?” Dee adds.

“You do that.” She hesitates for one moment, hand reaching out for Bebe. “Bye, Bianca,” she says quietly, before her hand moves to readjust her bag again and she storms away without a second glance.


	11. Mac and Bebe Hit the City

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mac POV. Warning for canon-typical misogyny and generala awfulness.

There’s a lot of things Mac did not know before Dee dumped a month-old baby in his arms. Top three are how much they cry, how much they sleep, and how much they shit. Mac feels like he spends his entire time round at Dee’s rocking and soothing and changing. But, God, most of all is how much shit they need. Not even just need in general but need on-the-go, at all times, because they’re even more high-maintenance than Dennis is. This thing is, like, twenty inches long. Not even the size of two wine bottles stacked on top of each other. So why does she need so much shit with her?

To be fair, this is the first time Mac has been outside the apartment with baby sans Dee, so it’s the first time he’s had to lug around anything that’s not his wallet, his phone, or his keys. Now he has to carry about a goddamn diaper bag with flowers all over it – thanks, Dee – like a mom in order to have the millions of stupid tiny items the stupid tiny baby needs to survive for, like, two hours out in the wild. Dee talked him through each item before she let him walk out the door with her baby, but Mac still thinks half of it is bullshit. At least one diaper per hour, for starters. How does one person produce so much crap? Mac does take four, just in case, though. Wipes, a changing pad, an extra outfit in case she shits all over herself – wait, no, two extra outfits as Bebe takes it upon herself to shit all over her current outfit before they’ve even walked out the front door, resulting in Mac having to take the diapers, the changing pad, and the extra outfit back out of the bag to change her. Bottles filled with pumped milk go in the bag, a couple burp rags which he really doesn’t think he’ll need but Dee promises him he absolutely will need, and sanitizing wipes which Mac thinks is really unnecessary on top of all the other wipes.

All this, diaper change included, takes an hour and a goddamn half. Mac can wake up in the morning and be out of the apartment in a minute and a half. It’s insane – but, whatever, it’s fine. It’s fine. He has the diaper bag. He has the baby. He has most of his sanity. Most importantly, he has a plan. Okay, so the plan goes a bit awry cause apparently loading a pram with a new-born in it onto a bus does not make you popular amongst the other passengers and there’s, just, so much sneezing and coughing going around and it’s absolutely gross. Change of plan; once he’s gotten off at Tasker & Broad, he decides to skip the BSL and walk the rest of the way.

“Now, this, this is Broad Street,” he proclaims as they trundle down south, passing stores, churches, the Jewish temples Mac can’t remember the name of, fast food joints, gas stations, apartment blocks, and rows upon rows of houses. “No other street in American can compare to it. It’s Philly’s longest street running from north to south, can’t remember how long though, and the longest straight urban road in the entirety of the United States. Pretty cool, huh? Okay, well, you kind of have to go around City Hall in the middle – we’re not going there, before you get excited, that’s the other way – but other than that it’s the longest. Dennis came up with this saying once, it was real funny, oh, God, what was it –”

There’s a slight interruption as a woman stops to coo over the baby, but immediately gets put off when he says it isn’t actually his, he’s just looking after it for a friend, and walks away. _Women_.

“What was I talking about?” he asks Bebe. “Oh, right, yeah. Broad Street. Dennis – _Uncle_ Dennis, I mean, I should really be saying Uncle Dennis – he says ‘they say it’s the longest straight street but, when you get to City Hall, it gets real crooked’.” Mac laughs. “Good, right?”

Bebe continues looking at him. She’s begun focusing better and seems to have decided that the best use of this new skill is to stare at him constantly.

“Okay, I know you don’t get it now,” he continues. “But you will in a couple years, you will see how funny your uncle is sometimes. Not as funny as me, of course, but still. Tip from me, while you’re still paying attention; if someone sends you to Fourteenth Street, laugh in their face, ‘cause this is Fourteenth Street, technically.”

Bebe’s pretty chill for the most part, surprisingly. Probably the motion of the pram as he pushes it down South Broad Street. He points out some other places as they go – that’s the Dolphin, some bar he and Dennis went once that played German techno the entire night, and that’s the Chinese Church, and this is the park Charlie always calls Macaroni Plaza that was named after some Italian dude. Mac decides it’s probably as good a place as any to give her a bottle and gets more than a few people stopping to shower him in praise for his wonderful fathering and his beautiful baby. Mac starts to kind of see the appeal in being a dad.

It’s not Macaroni Plaza that Mac wanted to show her, though, so he pops her back in the pram once she’s done guzzling down a bottle (like mother, like daughter) and keeps on trundling.

“Here it is, here we are,” he crows when they finally get there, standing under the huge sign emblazoned with the words _Lincoln Financial Field_. “Home of the Philly Eagles, the best team in the entirety of the United States and where you are going to see your first game. Pretty cool, huh?”

Bebe kicks her little legs at the sound of his voice.

“How old do babies have to be before you can take them to see football? Four? Maybe your fifth birthday. You would look pretty cute in a Philly’s jumper, I guess. I don’t care if you’re a girl and technically God made it so boys would play football and girls would stand at the side-lines cheerleading, but I am so teaching you how to play. You’re gonna be the best girl football player in the entire country. The best football girl player? Whatever. What d’you think?"

Bebe doesn’t even look at the sign, eyes still only for him. Mac sighs.

“Man, you really don’t do anything do you? We’ve been walking almost an-hour and you’ve done nothing bar make weird burbling noises and look at stuff. Bit like Charlie when he’s high, except you don’t look like you’re on the brink of death. Are you enjoying this? Do you even feel emotion? Actually, no, you probably do at least tolerate this. You’d be screaming otherwise. I would hesitate to say I know you well cause, y’know, you’re a tiny baby with no personality and limited emotions and I only met you, like, two months ago, but what I do know is that you do love screaming when something isn’t quite up to scratch. You’re a bit like Dennis in that way. Like uncle, like niece, I guess? Maybe you just don’t give a shit about any of this. It’s not like you’re able to understand anything of what I’m saying like an actual person. So, yeah, that’s the Eagles for you. What d’you wanna do now? You wanna go back to the park? There was a playground there, right?”

Bebe yawns, opening her tiny little mouth as wide as she can, which turns out to not be that wide. Mac sighs again. This is getting real boring real fast.

“Alright, back to Macaroni Plaza it is, then.”

*

Half an hour later, Mac is looking out over the kids screaming and scrambling like monkeys over the climbing frame and regretting every single decision he has ever made.

“What was I thinking? No, listen, Bebe; what the _hell_ was I thinking – parks are popular for kids who can actually use the playground, not for new-borns who would literally die the moment they set foot on it. You can’t even walk yet! Also, germs. Every single one of these kids is probably riddled with germs. Infested, even. I shouldn’t have taken you here –”

Mac swings the pram around to head back north just enough to jostle Bebe out of yet another nap and decide she hasn’t filled her screaming quota for the day.

“Oh, no – oh, no – oh, no, no, no – oh god. She’s screaming, the baby’s screaming, don’t panic,” Mac says, panicking.

Head held high, Mac high-speeds towards the closest bench – she’s already crying, what’s another bit of inadvisable-pram-handling gonna do – and parks it at the side, scooping Bebe into his arms. Thank god it’s become mostly natural, now; a full fortnight of carrying her about all day, every day will do that to a man who had previously never held a new-born before in his entire life. He, unfortunately, has not inherited Dee’s magical ability to pick up and subsequently shut up the thing just like that, despite the fact that he has way bigger arms and therefore must have far superior cuddling and rocking skills.

“Please, please, please don’t cry,” Mac says. “There’s no need to cry. We discussed this earlier; screaming in public is okay – me and Charlie do it all the time – but only if someone else is wrong and you gotta prove how wrong they are. Like when Charlie was trying to say that all baby carrots come from one big momma carrot and I had to yell to make sure he _knew_ he was wrong, that’s fine. But I haven’t said anything wrong. I’ve only said sensible things regarding parks and babies and your mom and also the Eagles. Now, I know I haven’t said anything wrong about the Eagles. Maybe you don’t like football?”

Bebe continues both to scream and be unaware of the concept of football.

“How, you can’t even lift your head, never mind understand the concept of football. Maybe your mom? I gotta tell you, if you don’t like ‘your mom’ jokes already, you’re gonna find it real difficult to have conversations with the gang in the future,” Mac says. “Maybe it’s the park thing? Well, we’re at the park, and we’re still in the park, and we’re probably gonna stay here for a good long while now, so you can stop. Crying. _Please._ Can you please stop crying? What about your bottle? Is that you want, your bottle?”

Mac leans down and pokes her cheek as he’s seen Dee do countless times before; Bebe twists away from it with an even louder wail.

“Nope, it can’t be that. I only fed you an hour ago. Maybe Dee. Do you want Dee?” he asks, only to be met with further screaming. “Oh, my god, I wish you could understand me right now because then, when I tell you to be quiet, you’d actually be quiet. Or not. Probably not. Dee never listens to anything I say – not that I care, of course, cause her opinion is useless and means nothing to me – but I had kinda hoped you’d be more agreeable in that sense. Unfortunately, you’re a stupid baby who doesn’t know how to shut the hell up or speak English. Urgh, will you please just _stop_ ,” Mac ends up whining, rocking her from side to side.

Most of the kids are still ignoring him, thank God, but Mac knows he’s beginning to catch the eye of some of the moms in the area and not in a good way. More in a ‘they’re starting to whisper amongst themselves and cast furtive glances his way which they think he hasn’t noticed’ kind of way which, uh, yes, he has noticed, thank you very much. They definitely helping him keep calm in this stressful situation.

Bebe continues to scream.

“Right, that’s it,” Mac says. “I’m calling your mom. Nuh-uh, don’t you wail at me, missy, you made me do this – oh, goddammit, what did I save her number as –”

As more and more moms in the immediate vicinity pick up on the fact that there is a man in the playground with a screaming new-born who just won’t quit, the contact saved as “Bird” decides she can’t bothered to pick up on the fact that Mac is calling her. And calling her. And calling her. And calling her.

“Urgh, I hate the both of you so much right now,” Mac groans, three phone calls in as many minutes of screaming later.

“Hey, are you alright there?”

The first has finally approached. Standing before him is a woman around his age with twin toddlers in a twin buggy and the guise of a got-it-together mom. The twins are dressed in identical outfits because there is clearly something wrong with humanity. Mac both wants to wring her neck and fall to his knees in front begging for her to shut this baby up.

“No, of course I’m not alright,” he snaps. “I’ve got a screaming baby and I don’t know how to shut it up!”

“First time father?” Mom #1 asks, with an infuriatingly sympathetic smile.

“Kinda, yeah!” God, if she doesn’t starting telling Mac how to turn off this baby’s volume knob, he himself is gonna start screaming.

“Is she wet?”

“Is she –” Mac begins, before –

Did she just.

Did she just ask if the baby was _wet_?

 _Gross_.

“No, she’s not wet, she’s only two months old, what the hell is wrong with you?” Mac says. “Geez, I thought only dudes could be pedos, what the hell?”

The mom’s face twists and Bebe screams and another woman approaches with her own little girl, again, why are there so many women here, and Mac doesn’t care that people are looking, he does _not_ , this is so annoying, and now the other woman, Mom #2, is asking what’s going on and Mac is not going to let Mom #1 spread filth and lies and slander like that.

“She just asked if my baby is wet!”

“I meant her diaper!” Mom #1 says, looking just as disgusted by him as he is by her, which is just completely unfair, in Mac’s opinion. “If she needs to be _changed_ , not if she – Katie-Bell, go and play on the swings with your brother, get away from the strange man.”

“Oh, I’m strange? I’m strange?” Mac says, as the little girl scurries away. “Oh, shit, you’re right, she is kinda damp.”

“Have you not been able to spend much time with your daughter?” Mom #2 asks, with a really weird note in her voice. Sort of like sympathy, but a lot bitchier.

“Oh, she’s not my daughter,” Mac says, as Bebe keeps wailing in his arms. “We’re not actually sure who the father is cause her mom has, like, banged every guy in the city. It might be me, technically, cause I was at the Halloween party, but that would’ve involved me actually having sex with her – and more than just hand stuff – and I find her just repulsive in pretty much every single way, so I doubt that actually happened – but her uncle is my roommate and I’ve known both of them since high school so I do feel kinda like a moral obligation to step in and play a fatherly role, especially as those two are both heathens and have not accepted Christ as their Lord and Saviour, so.”

The silence would be deafening if it not for the screaming which is actually deafening. Mac is surprised he even manages to hear his phone ring over all the noise.

He picks it up with, “ _What_ , Dee?”

“Do you have any diapers on you?” Mom #2 asks.

 “Could you please shut up? I am on the phone,” Mac says, still trying to rock Bebe as best as he can with one arm. “Geez, some people. What was that, Dee?”

“Why the hell were you ringing me?” Dee says. “Please tell me you haven’t killed my daughter.”

“No, I have not killed your daughter, but I will in a moment if she doesn’t stop screaming,” Mac says, pressing his phone between his ear and his shoulder so he can dig for diapers with his non-baby-holding arm. “Turns out she just needs a diaper change, that’s all.” He keeps on digging, taking out the bottles and the burp rags. “Uh.” He throws out the wipes, both baby and sanitizing, and the extra outfit as well. “Dee?”

“What?” God, her voice is even more grating than her daughter’s.

“The diapers don’t seem to be in here,” he tells her.

“What do you mean, the diapers don’t seem to be in there?” Dee snaps. “I gave you, like, half a dozen an hour ago!”

“Well, I had to take them out to change her!” There’s the sound of movement in the background, the opening of a door, then a few deep, calming breaths. “Dee?”

“Yeah, you left them all here,” Dee says, voice shaking with that Reynolds repressed rage. “Along with the changing pad. Well done, Mac. Great job.”

“Well, what am I supposed to do?”

“Well, I don’t know, how about you –” and she hangs up.

Mac stares at his phone; the physical representation of her abandonment. “Oh, that bitch.”

“Hey, could you maybe not use that kind of language in front of my children, please?” Mom #1 says, because she’s still here for some fucking reason.

“Uh, well, last time I checked it was a free country so I’m gonna say whatever the hell I want in front of whoever I want,” Mac says, and Mom #1 is starting to go, just, _red_ all over, it’s really not nice –

“Can we all please try to stay calm?” Mom #2 butts in, because she’s still here for some fucking reason as well.

“I am calm! I am completely calm, I am 100% calm!” Mac yells.

“Can we please just give him a diaper and leave?” Mom 1# says.

Mom 2# hesitates.

“Yeah, just gimme the diaper and go.”

Mac is pretty sure that, if he wasn’t holding a baby, Mom 2# would’ve shoved it in his face clean or otherwise. Whatever. It was a doozy to get her changed after that, on that very park bench, but no less gross; by definition, these are the only times Mac is ever glad Dee had a girl instead of a boy. Right now, he’s wishing she had neither in the first place.

Bebe screams before she’s changed. Bebe screams while she’s being changed. Bebe screams after she’s been changed. Bebe screams when he rocks her, and Bebe screams when he doesn’t. Bebe screams when he tries to give her a bottle, and Bebe screams when he takes it away. Bebe screams when she’s not in the pram and, surprise, surprise, Bebe screams when he puts her back in. _You just can’t win with babies_ , he thinks, _especially when you don’t have tits_. Okay, so Mac did kind of fuck up by not putting the diapers and whatever back in the bag after changing her but, in his defence, Dee had basically been screaming at him to get that baby as far away from her as he possibly could so, really, it was all her fault that they were in this situation.

“Why does anyone have one of you,” Mac says to her as he loads the pram onto the bus, surrounded by a storm of tutting. “Why does anyone voluntarily have one of you?”


	12. Charlie Learns to Change a Diaper

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charlie POV. Mild warnings for canon-typical awfulness, questionable parenting, Charlie's usual behaviour towards the Waitress, and multiple uses of the word 'pussy'. 
> 
> There is also some discussion of child sexual abuse, but all hypothetical and only in the context of diaper changes.

"Okay, when she takes a shit, that's when you really need to make sure she's all clean down there," Dennis tells him. Charlie's only a few minutes into Changing Diapers 101 and he's already getting bored. Dennis isn't exactly a great teacher. "Make sure she doesn't get infected - but, as it's just piss, all you really gotta do is give her a wipe down, wait til she's dry, and bundle her right back up again."  
  
"Man, I really don't want to be doing that," Charlie complains even as he unsticks either side of her diaper. To be fair, he isn't sure from who else he could learn how to change a diaper. "Like, I'm fine dealing with shit and everything cause, you know, that's my job, but I'm getting all up in her business and it's making me really uncomfortable."  
  
"It's not - it's not all up in her business," Dennis scoffs. He wouldn't want to learn from Mac, because Charlie's pretty sure he's doing it wrong. "She's five months old. It doesn't count."  
  
"It is all up in her business, it absolutely is all up in her business." Charlie doesn't even bother to try and continue changing her without further instruction. Not Dee, because if she wanted to teach him herself she'd have done so already. "It might not count now, but it's gonna count in, you know, the future, when she's an actual human being instead of what is a basically an object that can scream real loud. Oh, hey, Bebe, how was school; oh and, yes, I have been up in your business making sure it's clean of shit, how good of you to mention."  
  
"Alright, but, when you look at your mom, is the first thought that pops into your head that fact that she cleaned your baby penis ten thousand times?" Dennis replies. That's a good idea, actually, maybe he should ask his mom instead.  
  
"Okay, no, but - "  
  
"Exactly," Dennis says. Although, his mom hasn't changed a diaper in about three decades, so maybe that might not be the best idea. "So why is this - "  
  
"This is different because she's my mom," Charlie says. Wait, has he actually told his mom that Dee had a baby? "Whereas I'm - "  
  
"And she's a woman," Mac butts in and, yeah, Charlie has definitely not told his mom that Dee's had a baby. "See, I had this exact same argument with Dee. I said that I really shouldn't be changing diapers because I'm a man and it's inappropriate for me to be handling her in that way, and she said - "  
  
"Oh, my god," Dennis says. But why does his mom need to know that Dee's had a baby?  
  
"What? Oh, you think people don't look at me changing Bebe when we were out and about and think, huh, why is that adult man getting so up close and personal with that baby's cooch," Mac says. It's not like the baby is his or anything. "You really think people don't do that?"  
  
"Then that's their problem!" Dennis shoots back. Well, she might be, but that's beside the point. "What would you prefer, people looking at you a little weirdly out in public because you're looking after your - charge, or whatever - or would you prefer people staring at you because you're neglecting her by letting her sit in a pool of her own filth? I mean, I know that's how you pretty much spend your days, Charlie, and, if you get diaper rash, that's on you. But, she gets diaper rash, that's. Well. Also on you."

"Huh?" Charlie says. He won't tell his mom that Dee's had a baby, he decides. It's definitely none of her business.   
  
"You're weirdly invested in this for someone who isn't a parent," Frank says.  
  
He's sitting at the bar with Mac, drinking a beer and seemingly enjoying watching Charlie fuck up. He hasn't even managed to change her yet because Dennis has gotten too distracted to tell him what to do. Fortunately, Bebe doesn't really seem to mind chilling out on her changing pad on one of the booth tables as they argue.  
  
"Yeah, I thought you would want to stay away from changing diapers as much as physically possible," Charlie says.  
  
"Oh, no, I'm only getting involved in diaper changing to prove how much better I am than Dee at looking after her own baby," Dennis replies. "And I'm only teaching you guys because I don't want to have to be the only one who can change her when she's not with us."  
  
"And in case of an emergency," Mac says. "And neither of you are with us for some reason."  
  
"And we can't find some other broad to change it for us," Frank adds.  
  
"Nah, it's mostly cause I don't wanna do it," Dennis says. "I mean, ideally, you three would stay as far away from her as physically possible but, apparently, I have no say in who does and does not go near my niece, hence me teaching Charlie how to change a diaper."  
  
"I don't know, man," Charlie says, looking back down at the baby and the clean diaper next to her. "I'm still feeling real uncomfortable about this."  
  
"Would you be uncomfortable if you were changing a boy?" Dennis asks.  
  
"No, but that's because - "  
  
"I would," Mac volunteers, raising a hand. He's also at the bar with a beer, watching Charlie fail because Charlie's only friends with assholes. "I would feel uncomfortable with that."  
  
"Oh, what, because it's gay?" Dennis asks, mockingly. "Let me put something on the table; so you think it's inappropriate for an adult man to change the diaper of a baby girl, right?" Charlie and Mac both hum in agreement. "But if either of you had a baby - "  
  
"Who would I have this baby with, in this situation?" Mac butts in.  
  
"Oh, yeah, like if the Waitress and I had a baby," Charlie replies. He's on board with this line of dialogue.  
  
"What?" Dennis' face crumples with annoyance. "It doesn't matter who it's with - okay, yes, fine. If Charlie and the Waitress had a baby - "  
  
"Wait, why is Charlie the one who gets to have a baby?" Mac explodes. "I want to have a baby, why don't I get a baby?"  
  
"Well, go on out and knock a broad up, be my guest," Dennis fires at him. "It's a hypothetical baby. I don't give a shit whether you get a baby or not, can we stay on track here? Please? Okay. So, say if Charlie and the Waitress had a baby -"  
  
"Boy or girl?" Charlie asks.  
  
"Boy," Dennis replies.  
  
"Aw." That's a shame. He would really like to have a girl with her, then she and Bebe could be friends.  
  
Mac turns to look at him like he's insane. "Wait, you would want to have a girl?"  
  
"Yeah, man," Charlie says. "She'd look exactly like the Waitress, it'd be amazing."  
  
"Okay, but, in this _hypothetical_ situation," Dennis cuts in. "You and the Waitress have had a boy.'  
  
Alright. A boy, a boy's good. Charlie can play ball. "What's he called?"  
  
"Whatever you wanna call him," Dennis replies.  
  
"Mac," Charlie says after a moment of thought.  
  
"Nice," Mac says with a grin.  
  
Dennis, however, looks thoroughly offended. "You would name your baby after Mac instead of me? Whatever, it doesn't matter - say you had a boy and Dee, who is of no relation to your hypothetical son, wanted to change him. Would that be weird?"  
  
"No, no - "  
  
"An adult woman changing the diaper of a baby boy to whom she is of no relation," Dennis clarifies. "That wouldn't be weird to you at all."  
  
"No, of course not," Charlie replies as Mac says, "No, why would that be weird?"

"And you don't think there's a bit if a double standard between thinking it's okay for an adult woman to change a baby boy's diaper but not the other way around?" Dennis continues, voice getting progressively louder.  
  
"Look, Dennis, stop trying to play the morality card here," Mac says. "We all know that you don't actually give a shit and just want to laugh at us changing poopy diapers."  
  
"I'm just saying, you really need to examine your opinions on diaper changing," Dennis says. "Also, start actually changing diapers."  
  
"What about me, do I need to start doing all of that?" Frank asks.  
  
Dennis waves him off. "No, no, no. I wouldn't let you change Bebe if you were the last man on Earth, are you kidding? At least - at least, with Bebe, you don't have to worry about cleaning tiny baby testicles. Why don't you keep that in mind?"  
  
"A boy's also more likely to pee on you," Frank adds.  
  
Dennis stares at him. "How the hell do you know that?"  
  
"Oh, you peed on me the first time I changed you," Frank replies offhandedly. "Practically aimed your dick right at me."  
  
"And I would do it again," Dennis assures him.  
  
"Oh, yeah, I know you would," Frank says. "That's why I never changed you again after that."

Mac is now staring at Bebe like he's afraid she's going to turn into a mountain of piss.  
  
"I just don't see why it makes you so uncomfortable," Dennis says. "It's not like it looks anything like, you know. An adult one. I swear, my relationship has completely changed with that thing since I've started scraping shit out of one several times a day. I mean, it goes right up there."  
  
"Reason number one why I absolutely refused to change Deandra when she was a baby," Frank says. "I didn't want it to tarnish my relationship with pussy."  
  
"Oh, like anything could tarnish your relationship with pussy," Dennis says scathingly.   
  
"Oh, no, when I meant uncomfortable, I don't mean, like, sexually," Charlie says. "No, I'm just afraid I'll hurt her because, y'know, I don't have that much experience with this kind of thing."  
  
Mac snorts. "What, with pussy?"  
  
"Haha, very funny, Mac," Charlie says. Asshole. "No, I meant with cleaning junk that isn't my own."  
  
"Yeah, that's not making you sound any better, Charlie," Mac replies.  
  
"What? He isn't wrong," Frank says. "Charlie has no idea what having a pussy feels like. He doesn't know if it's gonna hurt her or not."  
  
"Yeah, exactly!" Charlie says. "Thank you, Frank."  
  
Frank raises his bottle to him. "You're welcome, Charlie."  
  
Dennis sighs dramatically. "You're not going to hurt her. I wouldn't let you do it if I thought you were. Besides, if Mac can get over this milestone, anyone can."  
  
"Then why can't Mac do it?" Charlie grumbles.  
  
"Well, after Mac proved himself entirely useless at all things baby related - " Dennis begins.  
  
"No, I'm not!" Mac butts in. "I'm not, that is a lie and you know it!  
  
Aaand the same argument that he and Mac have had a million billion times begins once again.  
  
"Mac, you _dropped_ her," Dennis says scathingly.  
  
"No, I didn't!"  
  
Charlie turns back to make sure Bebe's tiny socks are still on as they argue. She's been pulling them off recently, and it's been getting pretty cold, so. It doesn't hurt to check. Also because this argument got very boring very fast.  
  
"Yes, you did, we all saw you do it," Dennis says, using his high-and-mighty voice where he goes a weirdly high-pitched. "And, yes, she was fine, thank God, but she didn't stop screaming for two hours and all of us - and, I repeat, _all_ of us - were very traumatised! Me, in particular."  
  
"Uh, don't you mean _her_ in particular?" Charlie asks. The socks are still on, which is good, and he wiggles her fat legs to make her smile.  
  
"No, no, she's a baby. She'll bounce back from it, easy," Dennis replies. "Quite literally, in fact. She literally bounced on the floor. But me? I'm gonna have to live with having seen you treat my flesh and blood that way for the rest of my life."  
  
"Come on, Dennis," Frank says. "It's not that bad. You and Deandra got dropped when you were babies loads of times!"  
  
"Well, that explains Dee, then," Dennis says, and Mac guffaws.  
  
Charlie looks up at him, his eyebrows furrowed. "Yeah, but he also said you -"  
  
"Shut up, Charlie, and change the damn diaper," Dennis snaps.  
  
He and Charlie have a staring contest for a couple seconds before Charlie breaks. "Okay, fine. Just tell me what to do and I'll do it."  
  
"I'm not useless at all things baby-related," Mac grumbles to an apathetic Frank as Dennis talks Charlie through the steps. "I bet my sperm has made tons of babies."  
  
_"Really_ don't want to be boasting about that, Mac," Dennis butts in. "Front to back, Charlie; always front to back."  
  
"Especially in front of a fatherless baby and the mother's brother," Frank chips in.  
  
"This is so not fair," Mac whines, more of a baby than Bebe is.  
  
"Look, it wasn't me who said you're not to hold her again if you want to keep your heart safely in its chest where it belongs," Dennis replies. "That was the other twin. Now it's Charlie's turn to be the dad."  
  
"Hell yeah it is," Charlie says, sticking the diaper together as Dennis told him to.  
  
"At least I can change diapers," Mac says. "Unlike Charlie."  
  
"Hey, he's getting the hang of it," Dennis says. "There we go. All done."  
  
"Better than I ever could," Frank says.

"That wasn't actually that hard," Charlie says, snapping her back up into the bodysuit. "Baby bits are really weird, though."  
  
"Oh, yeah, it is, it's real weird," Dennis agrees as Charlie gets her back into her leggings with only mild disgruntled noises on both ends. Honestly, this baby has so many layers on right now, he's surprised she isn't overheating.  
  
"Alright, so, what now?" Charlie asks once Bebe's all trussed up like a turkey again.  
  
"I don't know, man," Dennis replies, moving back towards the bar. "You're the dad for the day. You try to find some way to entertain her. Mac, beer me."  
  
"Oh, goddammit."

Charlie looks back down at Bebe lying on the table. He definitely thinks this age is the most boring age she's been at so far. She can't walk. She can't talk. She can't even crawl yet, she barely laughs or makes any interesting noises. All she does are the same damn things she's been doing for the last five months except she's a whole lot bigger now. The only things she can really do now that she couldn't as a newborn are roll around a bit and put stuff she shouldn't put in her mouth into her mouth, which makes looking after her harder, not easier or more fun.  
  
Charlie sighs.  
  
Bebe stares at up at him and makes a couple baby noises.  
  
Charlie pulls a funny face.  
  
Bebe gives him one of her weird toothless smiles from under her bobble hat.  
  
"Man, you're no fun, are you?" Charlie says, mostly to himself. Bebe has no response to that. "Whatever."  
  
At least he can pass the time by clearing up a few things. He can hear Frank, Mac, and Dennis talking about a blizzard that might be hitting the Philly area around Christmas, and he's turning to interject when he knocks the pack of wipes off the table.  
  
"Goddammit," he repeats.

After a glance at her to make sure she isn't going to topple off the table as well,  Charlie ducks down to grab the wipes and, when he pops back up, Bebe makes a noise that sounds weirdly like a giggle.  
  
He stares at her. She stares innocently back.  
  
Charlie lowers himself back down slowly, and straightens back up again, also reasonably slowly. Bebe giggles again, although not quite so impressed this time.  
  
Charlie lowers himself back down again, then bounds back up, much faster, and Bebe absolutely crows with delight.

"Holy shit."  
  
"Charlie, could you please shut that thing up?" Mac says. "We're trying to have an adult conversation here."  
  
Charlie motions for him to shut the hell up. "No, no, dude, watch this." He repeats the exact same movements, but bounds up even bigger, and Bebe straight up laughs this time.  
  
"Holy shit," Mac says.  
  
"Really, guys?" Dennis says. "You find _that_ entertaining?"  
  
"It's Charlie," Frank reasons. "He's the living embodiment of peek-a-boo. Before you know it, he'll be playing nightcrawlers with the kid."  
  
"That's not creepy at all," Dennis says.  
  
"Show me again, show me again," Mac says, putting his beer down and moving to join them at the end of the booth.  
  
"It's easy, dude, you just," Charlie crouches on the floor, out of her sight; "Then, you," and leaps back up again, this time adding a loud, _"Boo!"_  
  
"Whoa, _awesome,"_ Mac says as Bebe shrieks with delight.  
  
"My reasoning is that, cause she can't see me, she thinks I've disappeared forever," Charlie tells him. "And that's why she gets so excited when I pop back up again."  
  
"Are they really only just finding out that babies have no concept of object permanence?" Dennis asks Frank.  
  
"Even I knew that by the time you were a couple weeks old," Frank replies.  
  
"Okay, now you try, now you try," Charlie says, stepping back so Mac can get Bebe's attention by pulling all manner of faces at her.  
  
"Charlie, you're gonna scare customers away," Dennis says warningly.  
  
"What customers?" Charlie scoffs as Mac crouches down, disappearing from Bebe's sight.  
  
Her eyes go wide, baby mouth slack, as she tries to figure out where on Earth he might have gone. When he bounds back up again, Charlie doesn't think Bebe is quite as happy as she was when it was Charlie but she still crows obligingly. Mac certainly seems damn delighted by it, breaking out into a massive grin as he baby-talks to her.  
  
"Hey, you wanna have a go?" he asks Dennis, who's drinking beer at the bar like he's too good to entertain babies, like he's above it somehow.  
  
Charlie just doesn't get it. Mac likes playing with Bebe because he's a sucker for attention from absolutely anyone. Charlie likes playing with Bebe for obvious reasons. Dee likes playing with Bebe at least some of the time because it's probably biologically impossible for her not to. Even Frank will take her off someone else occasionally because she's the only person who will listen to him talk about Nam til the cows come home. But Dennis - Dennis. Oh, he'll make sure she's cleaned and clothed and fed, and argue with Dee non-stop about how this is the best way to raise a baby, and this is the best way to raise a baby, and the way you're doing it is the completely the wrong way to raise a baby. But the man will straight-up refuse to play with her. And it's boring. Sure, she's still a bit too young to be doing all the fun stuff, but what's the point in having a baby if you don't at least try to have fun with it?  
  
Okay, so Dennis didn't actually have Bebe, per se, but what's the point in associating with a baby, then, if you don't try to have fun? Especially when it isn't yours?   
  
"No, I think you should actually stop before she gets overexcited," Dennis replies. "She should probably be going down for a nap soon, anyway. You don't want her to get overtired and not be able to sleep."  
  
"Uh, if she's tired, Dennis, she'll fall asleep," Mac says like he's an idiot. Charlie agrees completely. "She might be a baby, but she's not that stupid."  
  
"She's five months old, Mac!" Dennis bursts out. "She's stupider than you and that's saying something!"  
  
"Alright, fine, one more and then we'll stop," Mac says, squatting down and bounding back up again, this time with an almighty roar.  
  
Bebe, completely unsurprisingly, starts bawling her tiny little head off.

"Oh, now you've gone and done it," Dennis says, slamming his bottle back down onto the bar. Frank rolls his eyes and keeps drinking, sitting back to watch the fiasco play out.  
  
"Done what, done what?" Mac yells, as if there isn't a baby bawling on a table right before his very eyes.  
  
"Scared her half to death!" Dennis snaps, standing up as if to come to the rescue.  
  
Charlie is the first one to actually react to the baby screaming her head off situation, surprisingly. He scoops Bebe up in his arms and starts rocking her, as that's the only way he really knows how to potentially calm her without handing her off to Dee. Man, she really is screaming her head off, huh.  
  
"I didn't mean to!" Mac practically wails which is, just, not helping, Mac.  
  
"I know you didn't, but you would've you'd have thought twice before screaming in a baby's face!" Dennis says, voice straining.  
  
"I was just doing what Charlie was doing!"  
  
"Uh, no, I was just saying boo," Charlie says. Bebe gets even more of a fright when she catches sight of Mac again, so he turns so she's looking away from him. "You screamed in her face!"  
  
Dennis holds out his arms, beckoning. "Charlie, give her to me."  
  
Charlie draws her away from Dennis, into himself, for reasons he couldn't name. "What? No! Why?"  
  
Dennis looks at him like he's a crazy person. "So I can calm her down."  
  
Charlie snorts, bouncing her up and down in his arms. "Are you suggesting I can't calm her down?"  
  
"Uh, I'm suggesting that I can do it better than you," Dennis replies like an asshole. "And I'm telling you to give her to me."  
  
"No, man," Charlie says. "Just because you're her uncle doesn't mean you get to hog her all the time."  
  
"Charlie," Dennis says slowly, like he's trying to warn him or something. Ha, like he can do anything to Charlie while he's got a baby in his arms.  
  
"What?" he snaps. "You don't want her while she's happy but, as soon as she gets the slightest bit upset, that's when you want her?"  
  
"Shouldn't that be the other way around?" Frank asks Mac, who shrugs.  
  
"She isn't slightly upset, Charlie, she's screaming her head off!"  
  
"Yeah, and I'll deal with it! Come on, Bebe," he tells the screaming infant. "Let's go the back office; away from these assholes."  
  
Dennis throws his hands into the air. "Alright, fine. But if she's not quietened down in fifteen minutes, I'm coming in there."  
  
"Fine," Charlie yells back over his shoulder which, wow, that was a bad idea. "Sorry, probably shouldn't have yelled." Bebe screams louder. "Wow, I definitely shouldn't have yelled. You're really not liking this whole situation, are you? To tell you the truth, neither am I, buddy; neither am I. So I'm just gonna take a hand off you to open the door, is that okay?"  
  
Bebe keeps on screaming.  
  
"Right, nothing's okay for you right now," Charlie continues conversationally. "Never mind. Alright, there we go." He closes the door on Dennis and Mac's continuing argument. "Now that's a bit quieter, isn't it? Your uncle and your sort-of-uncle-possible-father, I mean, not you. You are never going to be quieter, are you? No, you're going to scream at me for the rest of your entire life, aren't you?"  
  
Surprisingly, Bebe keeps screaming. Charlie hums in agreement as he begins pacing up and down the tiny length of the office.  
  
"Yeah, I kind of thought you might say that. You know, I don't think I have ever seen you this unhappy. I'm tempted to call your mom but she'll probably just hang up on me. Or yell at me. Or both. God, don't get me wrong; I like spending time with you and all that, getting a real bond and everything but, man, I wish Dee hadn't chosen today of all days to lump you on us. Like, not even on all of us, she specifically said me, Charlie, I need to look after you."  
  
Bebe just keeps on screaming.

"Yeah, I know right? On the one day that I know the Waitress has a date, and I'm stuck looking after you. Not that you're not, like, important to me or whatever, but making sure that anyone the Waitress might go out with knows that, okay, she might be entertaining you for one afternoon but we all know who she really belongs with is more important to me. Look, if it makes you feel any better, you can be the flower girl at the wedding, alright? I will say I did try to sneak off with you earlier to go gatecrash but Dennis has been on my ass making sure I'm looking after you correctly so that went well. Mac is still following him around because he doesn't have any other friends, and then Frank is here..."  
  
Charlie trails off. "Actually, I don't know why Frank is here. You have any ideas?"  
  
He bounces her up and down a couple more times. She's still crying but it's weaker now which is probably good. Charlie pauses, tilting his head to the side to concentrate on her cries.  
  
"Because he has nothing better to do, did you say? Yeah, you're probably right," he says, continuing his pacing up and down. "He doesn't have anything better to do, whereas I have lots of things that are better to do than this. Unfortunately, I already told Dennis that I was gonna calm you down, so I have no other choice but to do that otherwise he'll never let me hold you again. Not that that's such a bad thing, if all you do is scream."  
  
He pauses in thought again. Bebe likes that even less this time, so he immediately starts pacing again. Damn, he really needs to figure something out.  
  
"Now, I've tried rocking you, and that hasn't really worked. Tried talking to you, and that has sort of worked but not really. The pacing up and down seems to have helped a bit. I can't feed you your bottle until you've calmed down, and you took it pretty recently as well, so it's probably not that. Could it be -" he checks her diaper. "Nope, not that. You're really not making this easy for me, are you, kiddo?"  
  
She's still screaming. Charlie grows pretty bored of her after that, not wanting to give it up but not really wanting to be doing this anymore either. All he's really thinking about is the Waitress and how he really wishes he knew how that stupid date was going. Terribly, he hopes. He ends up humming a tune he's pretty much entirely associated with her now - he's given up on writing more songs for her, because that went so well last time, but there're still a couple songs he'll occasionally hear on the radio that remind him of her. That song by the Police is definitely one of them, no matter how creepy Dennis says it is. This isn't, like, a rock song, though, just some ditty his mom used to sing to him as a kid. Makes sense that Bebe starts responding to it, then.  
  
"Oh, you like that song, huh?" Charlie asks her, quieter in his arms. "Yeah, it's a pretty cool song. I prefer my version, though."  
  
He sings, a little louder, until she falls quiet, then asleep, in his arms; " _Waitress, Waitress, give me your answer, do. I'm half crazy, all for the love of you_..."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song is Daisy Bell (Bicycle Built for Two), and there are many versions out there but the best are when they're sung with a cockney accent and I will go to my grave swearing that.


	13. Breastfeeding 2: Electric Boobaloo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alternate title - BREASTFEEDING 2: THE GANG GOES DEEPER
> 
> Dennis POV. Playing with the timeline a bit, this is set when Bebe is three months old, around the same time Chapter 9 but a month before Chapter 10 and 2 months before Chapter 12. Mild warning for questionable parenting, brief discussion of the movie Memoirs of a Geisha, canon-typical racism, and general awfulness.
> 
> I promise I started writing this before The Gang Does A Clip Show came out.

“I just don’t get it, you know,” Charlie continues. “We put her down at, what, seven right? And, not even two hours later, she’s waking up wanting to be up and at it again. She’s constantly wailing about how tired she is and then, when does she does finally fall asleep, she never stays asleep.  I personally think it’s the time. I think it’s how early Dee puts her to bed. I mean, it’s clearly too early, if it was later she’d sleep for longer, right?”

Normally, Dennis would be similarly up and at it, telling him exactly all the ways he is wrong about babies and their bedtimes, but tonight it’s different. Tonight is not a night for arguing. Tonight is Movie Night, so tonight is a night for quiet, explosion-watching companionship. A long, withstanding tradition within the gang, this is the first time they’ve managed to hold it in its rightful place in his and Mac’s apartment since the gang got a new, unfortunately permanent member, and Dennis is at peace. He isn’t in a tiny apartment than reeks of breastmilk and baby powder. He isn’t even covered in breastmilk or baby powder. Dennis is on his couch in his apartment eating his popcorn out of his bowl, and it feels right.

Sure, they tried to keep to the routine sans Dee but they only managed to watch about ten minutes of whatever flick Charlie had chosen before they all decided it felt weird, packed up the popcorn, and barged in on her whole situation, but that had felt even weirder. They had gone over there to try and involve her despite how annoying she is but, instead of appreciating their kind gesture, she had just handed her baby to Dennis and gone to bed. Didn’t stop to chat or catch up, nope. Not in the slightest. Just said he knew where the expressed milk was if he needed it and shut the bedroom door in his face. They still managed to finish the movie but Dennis would’ve much preferred complaining about his sister’s bony elbows than about her three-week-old baby. Thank God Mac had stepped up his baby-caring game and held her for most of the movie, partly because it meant that she wasn’t crying so much but mostly because it meant that Dennis didn’t have to.

He isn’t _really_ the biggest fan of holding her. Okay, sure, she’s tiny and warm and adorable. He can admit those are all good things. But he isn’t ever quite sure what she’s going to do next. Admittedly, what she can do is quite limited as she can barely lift her own head, never mind anything else, but one can never be too careful. Not there’s much you can do to prevent a baby from pissing you if you’re holding it, but that’s why you’re careful. A baby can’t piss on you if you’re not holding it in the first place. The thing of it is, Dennis can’t tell her what to do. That’s probably the root of the problem, here. However, he can still tell her mother what to do, which he does gleefully and frequently, so that makes up for most of it.

After a bout of crying that Dennis resolved by dumping the baby on her drowsing mother’s chest, they all agreed that they weren’t going to hang out as a whole gang plus baby until the thing had gotten a bit bigger.

The second time around  they didn’t even bother setting up at his Mac’s place, just dropped by hers with everything except a damn DVD player because Dee didn’t bother did tell them hers was broken and she hadn’t had time to get it fixed or buy a new one (read: couldn’t be bothered because her baby is more important than Movie Night, apparently). She did have a point when she said they hadn’t bothered to tell her that they were crashing her place for Movie Night but she should’ve predicted that. She’d had a baby, not lost all sense of time. Baby brain doesn’t mean you forget how to use a calendar.

They could’ve downloaded something to watch on Dee’s laptop but they chose not to in the end because it’s illegal (Mac) and they don’t know how (Dennis). With Dee having headed to bed, the baby ended up being their entertainment for the night: mostly lying her on her stomach, waving small toys in front of her face, and laughing when she got frustrated and cried about it. Dee did scream the apartment down when she realised they were hindering more than helping when it came to the whole free childcare business and they could still her cries when they left the building but they all agreed afterwards that it was still a pretty good time when it came to incorporating this new being into their lives.

This time, however, this time Dennis had sworn it’d be different. He’d actually planned ahead of time, which he was pretty pleased with himself about, for Dee to come around and drove over himself to pick up her, her baby, and all the ridiculous items that her baby apparently needs. He’d even given permission for her to fall asleep while watching the movie just to ensure she actually tried to participate in the night’s tradition. To no one’s surprise, she’d conked out as soon as they put the baby down in Dennis’ room, which they’d only achieved by Dee getting her to fall asleep in her arms, putting her in the pack-n-play with a blanket dampened with breastmilk, closing the door, and hoping for the best. Of course, the best was a forty-minute nap before she was up and bawling again because new-borns are absolute hell, but it was still forty minutes of uninterrupted screentime. 

Dee managed to pull herself together again enough to do her damn job and change and comfort her damn baby and make some snide comments about how one of the characters in the movie looks a bit like Mac except way hotter. Mac argued back that he was a lot more muscular than that twink, Dennis reminded him of the exact definition of a twink, and everything felt right, even if only for a second. Not quite back to normal; Dennis is slowly if unwillingly coming to accept that that’s probably never going to be the case. But close enough that he can relax and watch a movie. Now she’s quiet; they both are, the baby having settled down again just fine in arms that weren’t her mothers. She should probably be in the pack-n-play or something stupid and safe like that but who cares, it's Movie Night. It was his turn to pick the movie (even though Mac argued that it was still his turn because they had missed his movie last month but who wants to watch Alien for the millionth time, come on) so of course he picked the most intelligent, finely-crafted action movie of the last decade, and so of course Mac and Charlie start hammering on barely an hour in.

“ _Yeah, uh, it happened again_ ,” Mac says, in the high-pitched baby voice he’s had a penchant to put on recently that isn’t annoying at all. He, for some reason, thought it was a great idea to sit his ass down on the floor to watch the movie just so he can be near the baby and explain the plot to her. “ _Right in my shorts_. Like, that’s all she says. All she says.”

“You know what I’ve found with this kid,” Charlie begins. Dennis, personally, had found that she’s pretty good at shutting up and letting people watch a damn movie. “This kid seems to be obsessed with the fact that she’s got hands. She can’t get enough of the things: staring at them, sticking them in her mouth –”

“And missing half the time.”

“She just goes nuts for the things!”

“Oh, you mean when she, like, waves them in the air and sees them and is like, _holy shit_.” Mac demonstrates what they have all seen a tiny baby do many, many times.

“Exactly!” Charlie says. “I swear, ninety-percent of the sounds she makes is the word _whoa_ in various pitches and lengths. She will just not shup up about how cool everything is to her.”

 _Pah_ , Dennis thinks. He’s hung out with her, what, twice, three times? Maximum four times. How would he know anything about it?

“Yeah, especially at two o’clock in the morning,” Mac agrees. “Right, Dennis?”

“Mm.” Okay, maybe Mac does actually know something about it, still doesn’t mean he shouldn’t shut the hell up.

“I don’t remember you two being that stupid when you were that small,” says Frank, who is sitting beside him on the cracked leather couch leaving Dennis with pretty much no room at all.

That breaks his silence. Dennis twists to stare at him, jostling the sleeper in his lap slightly. “Frank, do you remember anything from when we were that small?”

Frank doesn’t even dignify him with a glance. He hasn’t really said much throughout the movie except argue with Dee about whether or not he should be allowed to hold her baby and make racist comments whenever the chemist is on screen, to absolutely nobody’s surprise at all. “Eh, good point.”

“I’ll tell you what, though, I’ll tell you the great thing about her still being this small is that, like, she may own all your asses when she cries,” Charlie says, like someone who has actually spent time with an eleven-week-old. “And, I mean, _owns_ it. But, during the day, it’s, like, what d’you wanna do, buddy? Cause I hope it’s watch Inception cause apparently that’s what we’re doing, for some reason.”

“Hey! This movie is a good movie!” Dennis cuts in. Goddammit, he knew this would happen. “You guys are just too stupid to understand it.”

Mac bristles. “I understand it perfectly!”

“Oh, yeah?” Dennis says. “Then why do you keep on telling the baby you have no idea what’s going on?”

“Why did the dude from the boat movie shoot the kid from 30 Rock in the knee?” Mac explodes. “It just doesn’t make any sense!”

“Can we please quieten down?” Dennis snaps. “We don’t want to wake her.”

They all look to the sleeper.

“Yeah, good point,” Mac says, much quieter this time. “We don’t want more of the screaming.”

“Isn’t she heavy?” Charlie asks. “Wait, is that a freight train?”

“Holy shit, that is a freight train,” Mac says, mouth agape. “How the fuck did that get there?”

“Oh, yeah, absolutely," Dennis replies as the most ridiculous car non-chase plays out before them. "It’s a bit annoying but it’s better than her being awake, so.”

“Hell yeah, it is,” Mac agrees. “Seems like she can’t physically shut up unless she’s asleep.”

“Oh, God, I know,” Dennis says. “How you’ve been managing to put up with her recently, I don’t know.”

“And you’re the one related to her.”

“I know!”

There’s a brief moment of beautiful, beautiful quiet where the only sounds are various explosions from the TV, and the baby’s sleeping snuffles and grunts because holy shit babies are loud when they sleep.

“I still think this movie’s stupid,” Mac says as the guy from the boat movie starts yelling at everyone.

“Yeah, I have no idea what’s going on,” Charlie admits.

“I’ve decided I don’t like the Chinese guy,” Frank says. “Seems fishy.”

“Frank, you said that five minutes into the movie!” Dennis says. “And, anyway, he’s Japanese, not Chinese.”

Mac looks at him in shock like that’s the most impressive thing he’s ever seen Dennis do. “How the hell do you know that?”

“Well, number one, they literally say that he’s Japanese earlier in the movie,” he says, feeling his hackles beginning to rise. “Number two, he was in _Memoirs of a Geisha._ Ergo, Japanese.”

“Wait, weren’t most of the actors in that movie Chinese?” Mac says. “Wasn’t there a whole scandal about it? I mean, God knows why when clearly no one can tell the difference.”

Charlie’s forehead crinkles, eyes darting all over the place. “Wait, what movie was this?”

“Oh, the one about the Japanese prostitutes during the war,” Mac tells him. “Weird outfits, loads of white make-up, _super_ Japanese – you know what, never mind, you were pretty high at the time.”

Dennis isn’t even able to begin to explain exactly how wrong Mac is before Frank is wiggling his fat finger at the screen as the dude shows up again.

“He was the guy who diddled the little girl! He was the guy who – wait, why’s he bleeding? Did he get shot, when did he get shot?”

“He did _not_ –” Dennis takes a deep breath as Frank and Mac argue over whether or not to rewind to figure out how he got shot. The longer he doesn’t sleep for, the longer she’ll sleep for. “He did not _diddle_ her.”

“Didn’t he meet her when she was, like, nine?” Charlie cuts in, when he’s barely been paying attention to this movie, never mind one that came out half a decade ago.

“Yeah, but he only gets with her when she’s sixteen,” Dennis argues because, goddammit, he likes that movie and he will not be letting them ruin it for him. “And, you know, it was different then. Girls married younger and all that so it’s fine.”

“Yeah, of course you’d say that,” Mac says, because the fact that Dennis is glad they’re friends does not rule out the fact that he’s an asshole.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dennis says, turning his attention back to the screen. The guy who played the Scarecrow is whining about all his daddy issues, and even he is finding it difficult to concentrate.

“Oh, he doesn’t know what you’re talking about, that’s so funny,” Charlie says with that little twinkle in his eye that seriously pisses him off.”

“Oh, says you,” Dennis snarls. “You were engaged to a twelve-year-old.”

Frank is only just able to say, “She was Korean, that’s different,” before Charlie is full-on yelling at him.

“– you asshole, if Bebe wasn’t –”

The small bit of face visible above his beard is reddening quickly and he’s already spitting but there’s absolutely nothing he can do about it, nothing physically he can do to provoke him – oh, this baby is rarely useful but when she is, when she is.

“Oh, what would you do?” Dennis taunts. “What would you do?”

“Guys, calm down!” Mac has his hands up, holding them out in a futile attempt to calm them both down as Dennis openly snickers. It’s too late for all that, anyway; the baby is reddening just as fast as Charlie is, her little lungs taking a deep, preparatory breath. “You’re gonna wake –”

He’s cut off by a siren cry and a voice snapping, “ _What the hell is going on_?”

Now that cuts through it all, even more than the baby’s screams do. Mac slumps, running a hand down his face like he only does when he’s really, really tired. Charlie curls in on himself, over the baby in his lap, watching them with narrowed eyes.

“That’s what wakes you?” Dennis snaps, glaring down at Dee’s head on his lap as she scowls herself awake. “Huge explosions on the TV, us having already yelled at us a couple times, and you sleep through it like a log. But your baby crying, _that’s_ what wakes you?”

“Shut up,” Dee says, uncurling her legs from where they were taking up most of the couch and pushing herself upright so her head at Dennis’ eye level instead which is no less annoying and therefore he continues to glare at her.

Her hair’s an absolute mess – honestly, her entire self is an absolute mess. Her face hasn’t been acquainted with a make-up brush for weeks, her hair’s in a ponytail she tied up three whole days ago, and Dennis had even had to do some of her laundry. It was mostly a shitload of tiny baby clothes but _jeez._ And falling asleep on him, using his thigh as a pillow, because she can’t stay awake for more than five minutes after her baby dozes off is just embarrassing. But, as per usual, Dee seemingly doesn’t give two shits about any of that and instead only cares about whatever the hell it is her damn daughter is doing. Right now, it’s squirm and squeal on Charlie’s lap as both he and Mac futilely try to comfort her. Dee’s a bit wobbly from having just woken up but she snatches her baby back and plants her butt back on the couch no problem.

“Impressive,” Dennis says.

“Shut up.” She lets out a little sigh when the baby latches, like she’s getting just as much out of it as the thing that literally needs it to stay alive.

Dennis looks down at Mac, who is studiously not looking at his sister nor the elaborate parasite attached to her breast. “And here I was thinking Dee was a better conversationalist than her three-month-old baby.”

“Shut up,” Dee says yet again as Mac grins up at him.

“You better be careful or they’ll end up being her first words,” Frank warns.

“Well, if they’re said to any of you, it means she’s got her head in the right place form the get-go.” Her eyebrows furrow over eyes still struggling to stay open. “Why is the twink from 30 Rock making out with the Juno chick? I thought he and the Star Trek dude had –”

“Some kind of twink-bear thing going on?” Even Dennis hadn’t seen that coming and he’s normally pretty good at telling who’s going to bang who is this kind of movie. “Yeah, I’d been thinking the same thing but apparently not.”

Her face produces even more wrinkles on the top of the ones she’s already got as the twink says some witty one-liner. “It wasn’t even a good kiss!”

“Shouldn’t you have covered Bebe’s eyes?” Mac says.

“I know where her eyes are firmly focused,” Dee says pointedly. “Where’re yours?”

Mac turns back to the TV pretty sharpish at that. Charlie snorts, and there’s silence once again.

Well, other than the sounds from the TV and the city outside, their collective breathing, and a continual _slurp-slurp-slurp_.

The chemist does some bad driving.

 _Slurp-slurp-slurp_.

The dude from the boat movie says some mumbo-jumbo to the guy who played the Scarecrow.

 _Slurp-slurp-slurp_.

The guy who played the Scarecrow puts a gun to his head, which is mildly exciting.

“Didn’t you stick your tit in her mouth two hours ago?”

Dee cracks open an eye, because she is seriously already falling asleep. “Yeah, so what?”

Dennis spares a glance down to where the thing is still sucking like it’s life depends on it. “Should you really be feeding her that often?”

“Dennis, have you seen how small this thing is?” Dee snaps. “She’s got a teeny tiny tummy that empties super quickly, I’ve got to replenish it.”

Dennis leans back a little to look at it properly this time. Her tiny hand is curled around a bare bit of Dee’s skin, as sweet as it is weird. “You’re right, she is a bit on the small side.”

“My baby isn’t small,” she scoffs, which isn’t contradicting herself at all. “She’s about two-fifths the size of Frank! When she was born, she was only about a third of his size. That’s way bigger.”

“How the hell do you know that?” Frank says after a second.

Dee looks at him like he’s stupid. “Uh, cause you’re just under sixty inches tall and, when Bianca was born –”

“Stop kidding yourself, Dee, no one’s ever gonna call her Bianca.” Mac’s tone highly suggests that the very idea of the baby’s name bores him out of his mind.

“She was a little under twenty inches – shut up, Mac – and now she’s about twenty-three and a half inches, which is approximately two-fifths of your height,” Dee continues like someone who’s also kidding herself she knows math.

“Sounds like you’re also kidding yourself you know math,” Mac says, plucking the thought right out of his head.

“Yeah, Dee, since when do you know math?” Dennis scoffs, and Mac snorts.

Dee turns to him, eyes widening in barely-controlled and tightly-wound incredulity. “I’ve always known math.”

Dennis pulls a face. He can’t think of a single time Dee has ever used math in their entire lives, and that’s almost three and a half decades worth of memory. “You used to force Cricket to do your math homework.”

“Yeah, in high school when I thought it was boring and pointless and it was easier to get him to do it,” Dee replies. “I still used it for counting calories and stuff – and remember how, in middle school, I was on the mathletes team until Mom made me quit because it made you look bad?”

“Yeah, no, I think I would remember something like that,” Dennis says; Frank hums in agreement.

“Oh, shut up, Frank, you don’t remember shit,” Dee snaps. “Point is, at her check-up they said she was growing at a perfectly normal rate so there’s nothing to worry about. She’ll still have overtaken you by the time she hits her teens.”

“Pretty bold to assume how tall she’ll be, don’t you think?” Dennis says. “I mean, anything could change between now and when she hits puberty.”

Frank snorts. “Pretty bold to assume I’ll still be alive by then.”

“I goddamn hope you won’t be,” Dee says icily. “No, what they do is they take the mother’s height and the father’s height and they estimate how tall the kid’s gonna be from that.”

“Wait,” Dennis says as his mind processes exactly what bullshit she’s spouted this time. “Let me get this straight; you don’t know who the dad is, but you _do_ know how tall he is?”

Dee flounders. “Okay, so I might – I might not know who the father is for certain, but I have a pretty good guess and –”

“Then why haven’t you told us?” Mac explodes; Dee shushes him, sharp.

“Baby voices, dude, baby voices,” Charlie reminds him.

“I just don’t want to be raising someone else’s kid!” Mac explodes, this time in hushed tones.

“You’re not raising shit!” Her thumb is stroking small, soft circles on her baby’s shoulder as her voice grows harder. “And I’m not gonna tell you who I even guess the father might be, so drop it.”

“Can you at least tell us how tall he is?” Charlie edges out.

“No! Absolutely no!”

“Not even to get child support?” Dennis asks pointedly. “You know, to pay for all these check-ups and vaccines you keep talking about, and for a nanny so you stop using us as free childcare.”

“You’re the one who keeps on taking her from me!” Dee shoots back, voice rising an octave. “And he – he – he couldn’t even pay child support, anyway, cause he’s poor as shit, so.”

“Way to speak highly of the father of your child, Dee,” Dennis says.

“If I was proud of who fathered my bastard, I would have told him,” she says shortly. “Can we please get back to watching the damn movie?”

“Fine.”

Turning back to the screen, Dennis has fully lost track of the plot. Maybe Mac was right, maybe it is a stupid movie. There’s a bunch of snow, now, for some reason? He really will need to re-watch this by himself at some point, especially without a baby next to him _slurp-slurp-slurp_ ing the entire goddamn time.

“The problem with you saying your baby isn’t small by using Frank as a comparison,” Mac says after not even a minute as Dennis curses them all. “Is that Frank is already pretty small – at least, with regards to height – so it isn’t a great metric to go by, and it also doesn’t explain why you just have to get your tits out every two hours.”

“Oh, so you don’t want my baby to be small, but I shouldn’t be feeding her every two hours,” Dee replies, voice dripping with sarcasm.

“Yes! Exactly!” Mac says, far too pleased with himself. “You also don’t want her getting too fat, though, cause that’s gross.”

“She’s a baby!” Dee snaps. “She’s supposed to be, like, sixty-percent fat! She gets really fat, has a growth spurt, then gets really fat again. It’s called cluster feeding. There’s, like, a system to it.”

“I also don’t get how she can survive on, like, no food at all,” Mac continues, completely ignoring her, in that tone he uses when he’s restarting an argument that he’s had a million times and yet still can’t seem to accept that he’s in the wrong.

From the way Dee rolls her eyes up at the ceiling, it’s a tone with which she has become as intimately familiar as Dennis has been for a long, long time.

“I just don’t get why you’re feeding her during the night,” Frank says before she drags the next rebuttal out of her baby brain. “Your mom insisted on cutting that shit out from the first week.”

“How the hell would you know what Mom did when we were new-borns?” Dee scoffs. “You barely gave a shit about us when we were three, never mind three months.”

“Oh, she wouldn’t stop complaining about you wailing in the middle of the night, especially as there were two of you,” Frank says breezily. “So, she started giving you cereal or whatever it was in your bottles so you started sleeping through the night.”

“She got the nannies to start giving us cereal, you mean.” Dennis’ is still mixed on whether he wishes Mom had lived to see her first grandchild. More free stuff, advice, childcare, those’re all good things but, when he really thinks about it, not only would he have been long infuriated by all her righteous parenting advice by now but Dee’s fury-choked, baby-broken responses would’ve probably stopped being so funny by the second month.

Frank makes one of those noises which clearly indicates how little of a shit he gives. “What’s the difference?”

“That’s a good idea,” Mac chips in. “Dee, you should start giving her cereal so she sleeps through the night!”

“Sounds like a great idea to me,” Charlie says, despite the fact that he hasn’t even had to put up with one whole night of screaming.

“Sure!” Dee says brightly. “Let me give her this really nutritious, highly-refined cereal that she can’t even digest instead of this fatty breastmilk that contains a shit-ton of antibodies and is perfectly designed for my baby! Sounds like a great idea!”

“Why not?” Frank asks. “If it made you two sleep better, why wouldn’t it work for her?”

“Well, medical guidelines have kind of changed a bit since then,” Dee says drily. “I think I’ll pass on taking advice from someone who was last a parent of a new-born when there was still a war in Vietnam – and before you say that we turned out fine so it can’t be that bad, we’re both unmarried crackheads and I’m a single mom, so, yeah, we turned out great, thanks, Frank.”

“My mom breastfed me ‘til I was three,” Charlie offers. “Apparently I couldn’t get enough of the stuff.”

There’s a collective wince as Dennis says, as nicely as he can, which is pretty damn nice because it’s Charlie he’s talking to, “Thanks, Charlie. Really needed to know that.”

“Yeah, and did you need to feed every two hours?” Frank asks pointedly.

Charlie pulls a face. “Frank, you practically feed every hour, never mind every two hours.”

“That’s because I want to, not because I need to,” Frank says like Charlie’s an idiot which, to be fair, he is, but pot meet kettle and all that.

“Oh, so it’s okay for you to feed every hour because you want to,” Dee says, voice hard, “But not for my baby to feed every two hours because she _needs_ to?”

“Actually, cause you said that she’s two-fifths the size of Frank, doesn’t that mean…” Mac trails off, and looks to Charlie, face crumpled in confusion. “She only needs to feed twice when Frank feeds five times, or is it that Frank needs to feed two-point-five times more than Bebe does?”

“That math doesn’t make any sense!” Dee says, voice leaping up an octave, as Charlie shrugs loosely. “It means that her tummy is two-fifths the size of Frank’s and that means –”

The stupid bitch very obviously flounders.

“ _Oh, I’ve always known math, Dennis_ ,” he says mockingly. “ _I know so much more math than you, Dennis_.”

 “Why don’t you do what my mom did?” Mac suggests as Dee glowers at him. “It worked out well enough for me.”

“No, Mac.” Her voice is very tired as her baby _slurp-slurp-slurps_ away. “I hate to break it to you, but it did not work out well enough for you.”

“No, no, no, Mac, I wanna hear this,” Dennis cuts in. “How much titty did you suck before the age of one?”

“Well, I don’t know if she breastfed me and, if so, how long for,” Mac begins. “But I do know the recipe she used instead of buying formula cause, you know, it’s so expensive. It was a mixture of condensed milk, normal old cow’s milk, and corn syrup. Sometimes powdered vitamins if we had them.”

“Oh, my god,” Dee says after a moment.

“How did you _survive_?”

“Was she trying to poison you?”

“Yeah, probably,” Dennis says, and Dee hums in agreement.

“Sounds alright to me,” says Charlie, to absolutely no one’s surprise. “She actually said told you the whole recipe?”

He hesitates. “Well, no, but, when I was in 8th grade, one of my cousins had a baby – not one of my first cousins,” he adds, when Charlie looks fit to interrupt. “She was either my first cousin twice-removed or my second cousin once-removed, and –”

“Oh, the one with the –” Charlie makes a weird gesture.

“No, the one with the –” Mac makes a weirder gesture.

“Oh, she was only a couple years older than us, right? I’m surprised she managed to get laid in high school, what with the –” Charlie makes the weirder gesture. It’s like watching a damn tennis match.

“What can I say,” Mac boasts. “Us McDonalds really get around.”

All of the Reynolds’ (bar the one at the breast) immediately snort.

“ _Bullshit_ , Mac –”

“You? Get around? You’ve gotta be kidding me –”

“I live with you, dude, I mean, it’s pathetic, it really is –”

“What I was saying,” Mac says loudly, only for Charlie to shush him again. “Is that she thought breastfeeding was gross and, cause she couldn’t afford formula, my mom made me help her with the recipe and, when I asked if she’d used the same recipe with me, she said yes. Well, she grunted yes, but that’s pretty much the same thing when it comes to her.”

“The thing is, how I see it, the reason she didn’t breastfeed was probably actually because she couldn’t,” Dee says like someone who knows what the fuck she’s talking about. It’s a tone of voice she uses a lot for someone who knows so damn little about, well, anything, really. “The mid-eighties were the height of formula feeding. It was being peddled as superior to breastmilk because it was new and exciting and –”

“It was man-made instead of woman-made,” Mac says smugly.

“Then, with the marketing making her feel like she was a bad mother if she didn’t use it, midwives telling her that her milk was no good, and everyone else telling her to just do it, it must have been a hard message for her to ignore,” Dee continues, ignoring him. “Even if she’d tried, it would’ve been useless, cause she definitely couldn’t pump when she went back to school.”

“Oh, no, she didn’t go back to school,” Mac cuts in. “No, she dropped out. It really wasn’t for any of those reasons, she literally just thought it was gross.”

Dee’s face also drops. “Oh.”

“How do you know all this, anyway?” Frank asks. “The way you parent, it’s like you haven’t read a parenting book in your life.”

“I read them so assholes like you don’t talk shit to me about something you know nothing about,” Dee fires back. “About how I should breastfeed, if I should breastfeed, how long I should do it for –”

“That’s a good point, actually,” Mac says. “When are you going to stop breastfeeding?”

“When she turns two, I’m thinking we’ll switch to wine,” Dee says drily; Dennis snorts.

“Now that’ll be funny,” Frank chortles.

“I mean, you can’t do it forever,” Mac continues, completely ignoring them. “You’ll spoil her. I’m surprised you’re still even doing it now.”

Dee leans forward, sniffs her baby’s soft head, her blonde hair. “She smells fine to me.”

Mac makes a strangled noise. “You barely let anyone else hold her.”

Dee snorts. “You’re only jealous she likes me more than you.”

“The only reason she likes you more than us is because you have boobs,” Dennis cuts in, to Mac’s joy. “In fact, that’s the only reason she likes you, at all.”

“You only breastfeed because you want attention and for people to look at your tits,” Mac says, picking up on Dennis’ cues that, if no one’s actually paying any attention to the movie, they may as well get their entertainment from ripping on Dee.

“No, no, no, there’re only two reasons she’s breastfeeding, and neither of them are for her baby’s benefit,” Dennis tells him.

“What?” Dee scoffs. “That’s not true at all!”

“No, no, this is true,” Dennis continues. “You breastfeed on demand because, despite your supposed knowledge of math, you’re too lazy to figure out how to do planned feeding; and you breastfeed full-stop because our mom didn’t breastfeed us and you want to prove that you’re a better mom than she is.”

There’s a moment of silence. Mac guffaws. “And you say I have father issues.”

“Oh, no, you definitely have daddy issues, you have major daddy issues. You have more daddy issues than this guy has.” Dennis waves at the screen, where the guy who played the Scarecrow is kneeling at his father’s hospital bed. “Even Charlie knows that and he’s got a cargo holds worth of uncle issues to unpack.”

Charlie’s eyes go blank. “Huh?”

“But, Dee, you, _you_ ,” Dennis says, adopting just enough of a patronising tone to really wear her down but not so much that she completely flips out on him. Just enough to break her. “Your mommy issues are really something to behold, aren’t they? That’s why you were so reluctant to name your daughter after her. That’s why you’re so reluctant to seek out maternal advice from her side of the family. In fact, if I had to hasten to guess, I would say that it’s the only reason you decided to continue to pregnancy in the first place.”

On the screen, the guy who played the scarecrow is openly weeping over his father’s dead body.

Bianca Barbara Reynolds detaches with a content little sigh. Her mother doesn’t move an inch.

Dennis smiles. “Thought so.”

 “I’ll tell you the real reason I breastfeed,” Dee says, voice low and pained, holding her daughter out for everyone to see as buildings crumble and collapse on the screen before them. “That. That is the reason why I breastfeed.”

Bebe’s little face is lax: eyes half-closed and unfocused, cheeks full and rosy, tiny mouth slightly parted, and expression completely sated.

“Holy shit,” Mac says.

“I know, right?” Dee says, voice bright.

“That baby is shit-faced!” Frank says.

“No, no, no,” she says quickly. “That baby is tit-faced.”

The chick from Juno chucks herself off a building.

“Holy shit,” Charlie says.

“I know, right?” Dee says, voice breaking.

Mac makes a strangled noise. “Oh, my God, Dee. Couldn’t you have been one of those women who gets post-partum anger instead of post-partum depression?”

“I don’t have post-partum depression,” Dee says even as a single, pathetic tear rolls down her cheek. “I would be dead or a lot weirder if I was.”

“The whole PPD thing is bullshit anyway,” Dennis scoffs, quickly adding, “Sometimes, sometimes,” before Dee actually bursts into tears. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure that some women, _some_ , really do get clinically depressed after having a baby. You certainly haven’t. No, no. You may be unhappy, and you definitely regret getting knocked up in the first place – but you’re not depressed. You’re just a dumb idiot who’s constantly being tortured by sleep deprivation, physical trials, and hormonal imbalances. Of course you’re miserable as shit.”

“Even trained soldiers can crack when sleep-deprived,” Frank adds. “Believe me, I know.”

“Business trip, Frank!” Dennis says. God, the one time he tries to be nice to his stupid sister. “Business trip!”

“Wait, didn’t they have this scene at the start of the movie?” Charlie butts in.

“Does it matter!” Dennis says, voice really straining this time. He takes a deep breath. “What I was saying was, it seems cruel to tell a new mom that she’s not ‘normal’ or ‘healthy’ because she’s struggling. Shouldn’t we be living a world where it’s okay for moms to say, _wow, this is really tough, I’m having a hard time dealing with this and I just need a break_ , and, instead of doctor’s saying, _there’s something wrong with you, you’re sick, most moms don’t feel this way_ – which, uh, they do –  they instead, I don’t know. Book you into a spa. They give you time to rest and relax. You know? And that’s why, when we visit you, we do just that. Okay, we’re not gonna book you into a spa, why the hell would we do that, but we take your baby from you, even when you don’t want us to, and we make you rest and relax, even when you don’t want to. Breastfeeding or not, PPD or not, we’ve been doing that for you. Isn’t that right? So why don’t you think about that the next time you use us as free childcare and go all weepy on us while we’re just trying to watch a movie, hm?”

There’s reluctant noises of agreement from the other three as the guy from the boat movie, the chick from Juno, and all the rest of them wake up on their fancy thirteen-hour flight to Los Angeles. Dennis smiles even wider. He doesn’t have to mention that it’s only really because he likes trying to control his sister’s life as much as possible and the gang gets boring after a while without someone to kick around emotionally. He’s said all he needs to. 

 “Thanks,” Dee says, after a long moment. “I think.”

Dennis watches the top spin, wobble, then the screen cuts to black. “Man, I really need to get me one of those,” he says, as the other four immediately start arguing about whether it’d all been a dream or not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you're all enjoying the new season! I absolutely loved The Gang Solves the Bathroom Problem, I think it's my favourite of the season so far.
> 
> deleted scene:
> 
> "We have to go deeper," the guy from the boat movie says.  
> "Hell yeah we do," Dennis says.


	14. Sweet Dee Cracks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dee goes to pick up her daughter directly after the end of Frank's Pretty Woman, S7E01, and the Waitress responds accordingly.
> 
> Warning for drug use, bad parenting, implied violence, suicidal references, panic attacks, and canon-typical general awfulness. Disclaimer that I have never been high on crack cocaine but I've used both the internet and comparable experiences and just kind of ran with it.

It’s not that Dee can feel her knuckles rapping on the door. No, no, no, no, no. That’d be boring. That’d be easy. That’d be every single day of her life. No, it’s that she can feel every single grain of wood and every single chip of paint make contact with every single skin cell and she also can’t feel any of them at all. That’s the thing, that’s what’s so great about it. It’s that she can hear the not-so-steady sound of flesh meeting wood but also she is the wood she is the flesh she is the sound. It’s that she can feel the door rapping its knuckles back.

“What’s the password?”

It’s that she wants to rip off the head of the Waitress and stick it on a pike and give it to Charlie but, honestly, that’s how she feels most of the time so there’s actually not much of a change there.

“What’s the – _fuck you_ , is that the password?” Dee snaps, slamming her hand on the wood, flesh, sound. “Is that it, is that the goddamn password?”

“You swore to me on pain of death not to open the door to anyone who doesn’t give the password!”

“Yeah!” Dee fires back. “ _Your_ death!”

The Waitress huffs and Dee can see it, can see the irritated expression on her smug little face, can feel it in the soles of her feet. “I’m not opening the door until you give me –”

“ _Pigeon_!”

“– and you calm down,” the Waitress continues, voice stubbornly firm and grating as if she hadn’t even heard the word ripped from Dee’s dry throat. “You’re scaring her.”

Dee takes a deep breath and reminds herself she doesn’t have a pipe or tin foil or any rocks left even if she unpicked every thread in her jacket, her skin, the thin carpet in the hallway, but she does have a daughter. Sure, if she went out, she’d be sure to find tin foil or pipes, and she’d definitely be able to find crack, but she wouldn’t find herself another daughter. Okay, she might, there’s a slightly less than fifty-per-cent chance that she might, but she’d have to wait another nine months and her body just really isn’t up to that right now so she may as well wait the nine seconds it’ll take her to calm down instead. She breaths out, resting her palm on the wood of the door, focusing on that instead of the sweat on her neck and the jitter of her palms.

“Alright, I took a deep breath, and counted down from nine, you happy?” Her voice sounds distant and close all at once, snaking under her skin but not even nearly the loudest voice rattling around her brain. “Can I come in now?”

The door opens and Dee barely even acknowledges her existence, plucking her daughter squealing with delight out of the Waitress’ arms. She has no qualms about it, no guilts, because sometimes all a woman wants to do is smell her baby’s head. She doesn’t want to make niceties with her babysitter. She definitely doesn’t want to pretend like she gives a shit about said babysitter. All she wants is to smell her baby’s head. That, and smoke some more crack, but her baby is more readily available at the moment.

“Oh, hello, baby, hello, Bebe, did you miss me?” Dee coos. “Cause I didn’t miss you but that’s okay because you’re a stupid baby and don’t understand what I’m saying.”

Bebe babbles happily either way. Dee brings her in close, pressing her ear to her chubby chest and listening to her heartbeat: the quiet, consistent drumming. She vaguely hears the sound of the door closing behind her, Waitress babbling on in the background as she gathers up Bebe’s things; how much milk she drank, how much she crawled around, how much finger food she ate. It’s all that other baby bullshit that Dee should probably care about but really doesn’t, her only focus on the heartbeat and the hunger it muffles, the desperate, damning dominion it holds.

“God, you used to be inside me, how whack is that,” Dee mutters, pulling her in for a proper cuddle. Her baby’s soft hair: that’s all she needs.

“Dee? Dee? Dee, are you listening to me at all?”

“No.”

She cracks open an eye anyway, only to see nothing new. The tiny apartment looks the same as it always does: grody, squalid, and, most noticeably, small.  Even Dee can keep her place looking tidier than this shithole, and she’s the one who actually has a nine-month-old. It isn’t that it’s not clean, it just a complete mess. It’s like an entire toy store exploded in there. Way more books are scattered about the place – on the bed, on the dresser, on the floor – than at Dee’s apartment, because the Waitress is so much better at the whole child development than she is. Dee mostly just lets her do whatever and hopes for the best.

 “You look like Hell.”

And there the Waitress is, standing with her arms folded over her stomach rather than her chest because she’s the biggest mess of it all. Bebe mostly smells like baby shampoo, now, instead of whatever made her smell so enthralling as a new-born, but it’s more than good enough for Dee.

“Just got back.”

Now that stops her line of questioning in its tracks. “Wait, you’ve seen that movie?”

“Fuck _yeah_ , I’ve seen that movie.” Dee doesn’t need anything else, just this. Not money, not love. Just this. With her baby in her arms, she can just about kid herself of that. “I was totally a Veronica in high school.”

“If you were Veronica, God knows who I was,” the Waitress says, almost under her breath. “But, seriously, though, are you alright? What happened with the whole prostitute thing?”

Dee gives Bebe once last kiss on the forehead before she sits down, balancing her in her lap. “Alright, so, after we got back from dropping Bebe off here, Roxy’s client Tiger Woods shows up, but get this –”

“It wasn’t actually Tiger Woods,” the Waitress finishes, pushing a burp blanket aside and sitting down on the bed next to her. Bebe stretches for her, and she smiles, waggling one of her fat little fists.

“Exactly!” Dee says. “It was actually the same actor who impersonated Donovan McNabb when we all tried out for the Philly Eagles.”

The Waitress raises her eyebrows. “You tried out for the Philly Eagles?”

“Yeah, they were holding these open try-outs.” A great thing about the Waitress is that she knows all of the gang but practically none of their stories. Whenever she tries to tell tales of their hijinks to anyone else, they either look at her like she’s crazy, ask her how she got in their office, or both. “Mac instantly got tackled by one of the McPoyles and Dennis got hit in the head by a football, which was _super_ funny, but I was able to kick the ball super far cause of my long legs.”

The Waitress leans back, as if to assess just exactly how long her legs are, and Dee obliges, stretching them out before her. “Wow. You do have really long legs.”

“I know right?” Dee says. Bebe thinks it’s some kind of game, crowing in joy, so Dee obliges her as well, rocking her back and forth in her lap. “So, it wasn’t Tiger Woods, but it turned out he was pretty loaded anyway _and_ he wasn’t actually paying to have sex with Roxy, he just wanted to rub her feet – I know, weird, right?”

“That is _so_ weird.”

“Anyway, he offered to give me five hundred dollars to let him massage my feet –”

“That,” she says, sounding far more certain, “Is much weirder.”

“Five hundred bucks is five hundred bucks,” Dee points out. “Normally, you have to pay fifty bucks to get a massage. I was basically getting _paid_ to get a massage.” Bebe has now started pulling at her clothing, and Dee obliges that as well, pulling down her vest and unclipping her nursing bra without a second thought. “Anyway, he got his rocks off and we got our money, we headed over to Charlie’s so Frank could propose, she had some crack on her and, before you ask, no, I don’t have any more –”

“I wasn’t gonna ask that,” she says, too quickly to mean anything but the opposite.

“I thought you were only an alcoholic?” Dee presses, just to watch her squirm, as Bebe finally latches.

“I have never smoked crack, Dee, and I never will,” she says, with far too much faith in herself than an alcoholic should ever have. “I’ll never ever want to.” Something in her gaze sharpens. “Wait, did you –”

“What? Of course, I did.” Like that’s even a _question_. “You clearly have never –”

So, it turns out having your baby ripped from your nipple is just as unpleasant as it sounds. Her arms are full of warmth and primitive comfort one moment, empty and enraged the next. Dee stares at the Waitress, her crazy-wild eyes, the baby she made with her own goddamn flesh in arms that do not own her, that do not deserve to be anywhere near her, her doped disquiet flipping into full-blown fury.

“What the fuck, Waitress?”

She pulls Bebe into her body, as if trying to shield her, as if there is a threat to her and that threat is Dee. “You can’t breastfeed your baby after smoking crack!”

“I can breastfeed my baby whenever the fuck I want!” She can feel her whole body shaking, trembling – half-adrenaline and half-rage, half-crack and half-cracking – as her baby wails. “Give me back my baby!”

“Shut up,” the Waitress snaps, shifting Bebe in her arms, moving her over to her left shoulder.

“I said, _give me back my_ –”

The Waitress shoves her away when Dee, for a lack of a better word, lunges in total, blind, stupid rage at her, at her baby, and shoves her away hard, enough so that Dee stumbles back a few steps, shoves her again before she’s able to find her balance, her body not good for anything much these days except feeding babies and dragging dead whores out into hallways, and apparently she can’t even do the first one, now, and she’s clearly freaking out, The Waitress is clearly freaking out or totally outraged herself and –

She’s rubbing her daughter’s back?

“Dee, what the hell are you doing?”

Dee tightens her grip on a blanket she’d found on her bed, every muscle in her body tense and brain screaming. “You need it in case she throws up on you.”

A steady series of clunks starts vibrating under their feet as the occupants on the floor below begin making their complaints via, most likely, hitting the ceiling with a broom. The Waitress yanks the blanket from her hands, shoving her again and again towards the only other door in the room. “ _You_ need to go take a shower.”

“What? No, I don’t, it was barely half a rock – Waitress, _come on_ –”

Dee could overpower her, she knows she could; she is the Mother Goddess and she is fueled by a wellspring of mama bear rage no mere babysitter could ever hope to match, but she doesn’t want to hurt her daughter, can’t hurt her already distressed, screaming daughter because all the instinct that sources that goddamn wellspring and – the door closes in her face. The door, it’s closed in her face, and her baby’s screaming, she’s screaming so, so loud, but even that’s not loud enough to drown it out. Dee kicks the door, hard, a neat little accompaniment to the banging from below and the bawling from her baby and whips around to find something else in her bathroom to destroy, anything else of flawed, shitty design that she can demolish other than her brain and possibly her daughter’s as well and definitely the Waitress’ face and she – she catches herself in the mirror. It’s a tiny, shitty little mirror, but a mirror it remains and she looks – well, a crazy person, she looks like a crazy person. She looks probably as bad as she did the last time. To be fair, she was half a decade younger and didn’t have a soul-sucking, screaming parasite that kept her up all hours of the night, then, so it’s not as bad as it might seem. No, then the hollow, crazed eyes were because she was an idiot crackhead, not because she was an idiot mother furious at everything and also still a bit of a crackhead.

Dee would say she looks like she’s seen a ghost, but she had never really thought that that younger, greener version of herself – that self who didn’t have a soul-sucking, screaming parasite that kept her up all hours of the night, that self who seemingly died so that her daughter could live – was well and truly dead, anyway. There’s something building in her stomach, a kind of hysteria as her body realizes that, hey, she probably isn’t going to get her hands on any more crack for the foreseeable future, and also she would really like to get out of this bathroom and also hold her baby and also get out of this apartment block and run really, really far away and never see her baby ever again and also find some more crack. But she’s not going to do that because that’s a stupid idea and it would screw things up more than they’re already screwed up. All she has to do is calm down and have a shower. How hard is that?

The Waitress has a shitty mirror in a shitty bathroom but she has a couple purple haircare bottles and a cheap lemon shower gel, so that’ll at least get her smelling like washing-up liquid instead of burned plastic and smoke. They even might make her feel like a normal human being again instead a stack of Jenga blocks that will collapse if you blow too hard.

 _That’s all I’m gonna do here_ , she tells the chick in the mirror who looks she needs a pep talk, a kick up the ass, or both. _Just take a shower, just do a thing I do all the time, except in the Waitress’ bathroom with my kid screaming fit to burst in the next room._

Her reflection does not look impressed.

Her head.

Really hurts.

So does her foot.

It vaguely occurs to her that she might not actually have unlimited time before the Waitress is banging on the bathroom door to make sure she’s actually showering and not slicing her wrists open with her crappy five-for-a-dollar disposable razors or however else she could kill herself in the most depressing place you could kill yourself known to man, so she kicks off her boots without falling over, shucks off her watches and bracelets and rings and lets them clatter to the floor, extracts herself from her jeans with increasing difficulty. There’s a close-to-overflowing wicker basket tucked next to the toilet, so Dee shoves her hands in the jeans pockets to make sure there’s no cash or anything in there and –  

And.

She grabs the edge of the sink, and the sink grabs her back, and physically she doesn’t quite collapse but her brain most certain does, because there is an ‘ _and_ ’ here, a pretty damning ‘ _and_ ’ in the form of a little plastic baggie in her jeans pocket, except it can’t be _that_ , it can’t be. Never in a million years could it be _that_. It’s practically junkie gospel by this point: there’s no such thing as leftover crack.

 _But it might be that_ , her brain says, so loud now that there’s no one else to listen to.

 _Shut up_ , Dee says to her brain.

 _You never know_ , her brain presses, always, always pressing.

 _I’m pretty high_ , Dee thinks. _I’m pretty tired, and I’m pretty sure you don’t know shit_. She squeezes the plastic between her fingers, hard, and feels nothing.

 _Goddammit_ , her brain says.

 _Eh, it’s probably for the best_ , Dee replies, but her reflection is disappointed, her brain isn’t talking to her anymore, and she also might be going slightly insane, so she turns away to finish undressing even if only so she isn’t looking at herself anymore, and steps in.

The shower head splutters to life like an old man who wishes he’d died during the night. So much for the hope of it drowning out the sound of her daughter’s screams or drowning her in general. Temperature-wise, though, this is alright. It’s not great, but it’s alright, even if the purple shampoo turns out to not be lavender like she’d hoped, instead that stuff that is meant to stop your bleach blonde hair from turning brassy and smells like a goddamn nursing home. She’s been cold for hours. Between the impending withdrawal, the gnawing guilt which was potent this time nine months ago but is now just getting tedious, the sudden, inescapable exhaustion, and how much damn hair she has even after half of it fell out post-partum, Dee can barely finish bathing before having to take a break. She leans against the wall separating the bathroom from the main room, shuts her eyes, presses her forehead against it, and says, “You got this, Dee.”

The shampoo almost immediately starts burning her eyes, so she sighs and continues to shower before the Waitress decides Dee’s actually topped herself and breaks down the door.  Except she probably wouldn’t break down the door, she would probably just yell through the door a lot, then call an ambulance, and then call the cops because Dee is the mother of a nine-month-old baby and also high on crack cocaine.

Dee tries to think of her daughter and not about what she shouldn’t be thinking about: it was thinking about what she shouldn’t be thinking about and not about her daughter that caused this problem in the first place. Actually, it was not thinking about who she was banging, why she was banging him, and how she was banging him that caused this problem in the first place, but that’s beside the point. She’ll think about what she shouldn’t be thinking about later, when she’s not by herself, possibly when she’s with Dennis because at least then she’ll be bitched out by someone who actually understands what it’s like to be constantly chasing that first hit, _Waitress_ , instead of someone who can’t hold her booze, _Waitress_ , and is actually a blood relation to her baby, _Waitress_. She’s thinking about her daughter and she’s showering like a normal human being and It’s fine.

Actually, she’s done showering.

Dee turns off the water, which only makes it so she’s shivering in a too-warm room whilst sopping wet instead of shivering in a too-warm room whilst in in the process of being made sopping wet. She’s also, when she steps out of the shower, only able to find a towel and not any clothes. It’d seem obvious, as she’d dumped all her clothes in the wicker basket, but Dee hasn’t showered at someone else’s since Bush was President, at least. She cracks open the bathroom door, deciding to ignore the realization that she probably could’ve just opened it earlier instead of kicking it, only to see the Waitress sitting at the end of her bed, her baby in her lap, murmuring quiet encouragements as she bottle-feeds her. Bebe makes that content little sigh when she’s finished, and it had never occurred to Dee that she would make that sound – that lovely, little sound – for anyone else but her.

“You didn’t give me any clothes,” she snaps, because she’s pretty sure any illusion of friendliness they may have built up has been thoroughly laughed out of town by now. “My clothes probably stink of crack.”

That stupid soft expression on the Waitress’ face slams shut. “ _You_ didn’t give me any warning.”

“I turned off the shower, is that not enough –”

“Alright, fine!” the Waitress snaps. “If I get you some clothes, will you shut the hell up and go back into the bathroom?”

Dee’s only response is to slam the door shut again. Thankfully, she can’t see the chick in the mirror anymore, hidden behind a sheet of condensation. _She’s probably better off under there, anyway_ , she thinks as she towels herself dry. There’s an odd sound, like a knock on a door that’s slightly muffled by something. When she opens it back up, the Waitress balancing her daughter on her hip with one hand, and knocking on the door and holding a change of clothes simultaneously in the other.

“Here.”

The Waitress shoves the clothes unceremoniously in her direction, expression still as stormy as ever. Bebe reaches for her, as well, but Dee can barely stomach a glance at her as she takes the clothes, snapping the door shut behind her once more. The pants are just some old grey sweatpants, nothing to write home about, but there are two tops: two worn-soft tanks, just like what Dee wears day-in, day-out. Goddamn her. She dresses quickly, testing the give of the tanks because, if the Waitress gets her kicks out of mocking Dee for not being able to breastfeed, Dee is going to happily insist on stretching her clothing out of shape. 

“You know, these are looking an awful lot like pajamas," she says as she reenters the main room.

“That’s because they are pajamas,” the Waitress replies, not looking up from her daughter.  They’re both sat towards the center of the bed, Bebe holding a bunny she is intermittently chewing and waving at the Waitress. The room smells, faintly, of milk both curdled and expressed, and the Waitress is wearing a different shirt, now, the dumb bitch.

Dee snorts as she moves to join them, crawling across the bed to her. “What? I’m not staying here overnight.”  

“Well, I’m not letting you take her by yourself,” the Waitress says, as if the mere idea is laughable. “And I can’t drive you because I don’t –”

“Have a car, I know.” Dee smiles, perfunctory, as the bunny is waved at her. Bebe looks briefly delighted and then immediately distracted again. “I’m not leaving here without her.”

“You can’t smoke crack and then drive your baby home,” the Waitress says, but it’s not in anger, like before. It’s quiet and controlled and anything but understanding.

“I know,” Dee snaps. “You think I’m that bad a mother?”

The Waitress doesn’t say anything, which is an answer in and of itself, really.

“Oh, thanks, Waitress,” she continues, voice sickly sweet. “For the heart-warming amount of trust you have in me, your friend of _how_ many years now?”

“We’re not friends,” she says scathingly.

“I let you look after my daughter,” Dee says. “And you’re letting me crash here. That’s solid friend territory.”

“You also let Charlie look after her, so excuse me if I’m not all that flattered,” the Waitress points out. “And I’m only letting you stay ‘cause I don’t trust you to not go out and do anything else so stupid.”

Dee snorts. “Says the alcoholic."

“I haven’t gotten drunk and then looked after your baby,” the Waitress shoots back, irritation clearly rising again.

“Yet.”

The Waitress flinches, hilariously obviously, and tries to cover it by sitting up abruptly, fixing Dee with an overtly wroth-filled glare, and snarling, “Would it actually kill you to shut the fuck up for once in your life?”

Dee rolls her eyes, stroking her daughter’s soft hair. Pretty much all of the platinum blonde she’d be born with is long gone by now, slowly being replaced by a sandy color not unlike Dee’s own. “Alright, alright, don’t get your panties in a twist.” The Waitress is looking a little bit like she wants to strangle Dee and a little bit like she wants to scream the whole block down. “I didn’t mean it like –”

“I know exactly how you meant it,” the Waitress says icily, swinging her legs over the side of the bed and gripping her hair with white-knuckled fingers, clearly making a rather admirable effort to not throttle Dee or do something else as equally stupid. Her own hair’s gotten a lot longer, recently, about which Dee would’ve once felt vindictive but now she just feels tired. Always, always tired. The Waitress takes a few more, deeper breaths, before her hands loosen and begin brushing her hair instead, running her fingers through it in some laughable attempt to maintain control. Hey, maybe some of Dennis’ rants about psychology while she barely listened did sink in. “Alright, we need formula.”

Dee pushes herself up on her knees, wanting to get on her eye-level but not desert her daughter on the bed. “No, no, no, you can’t get formula. Dennis will laugh in my face if I use formula. I’ve been banging on about exclusively breast-feeding for months!”

“Well, the only one of us who can make milk for free decided it would be a great idea to smoke a shitload of crack,” the Waitress replies pointedly. “So it’s either that or you’ve got a literal starving baby on your hands.”

“It was not a _shitload.”_

“I really, really don’t care, Dee.” Come to think of it, that’s how the Waitress always sounds, too. Tired. Always, always tired. “Look, if I let you out that door, will you immediately go and buy more crack?”

“No!”

 _Mm, you sure about that_ , her brain says.

 _Nah_ , Dee pshaws. _Nah, I’m not gonna do that, why would I do that?_

 _You’re gonna do it as soon as your baby is not in your charge_ , her brain counters. _Possibly even before then_.

The Waitress is still looking at her. Her mouth is tired and her eyes are tired and the lines in her forehead may as well be spelling out the words _I’m not buying your bullshit_. God, Dee hates it when women get to know her as a person.

“Alright, yeah, probably,” she admits. Maybe in another twenty-four hours (days?) (months?), she won’t feel like going and buying more crack but, right now, even with her daughter by her side, the smell of her, it still itches, thrums under her skin, as much in her body and in her blood as her baby had been.

The Waitress sighs, watching Bebe play for a moment longer. “Alright, come on. Before the stores close.”

“Wait, what? No, no, no, I’ll be fine here!” Dee blurts, as the Waitress paces around, gathering up keys and jackets and purses. “We’ll be fine here, won’t we, Bebe?”

“I can barely even trust you to hold her right now,” the Waitress says, throwing her jacket onto the bed much more aggressively than need be, startling Bebe. “Let alone be left alone with her.”

Dee pulls her daughter into her arms, only so she doesn’t start crying again, and there they are. The alarm bells that go off every time someone else lays claim on her baby; _God_ , she hates her. “Why do you care so much, anyway? She’s not your kid.”

“Uh, who has spent more time with her this week, you or me?” the Waitress asks, clearly not wanting or expecting an answer. Dee has no way to reply other than to pull her baby in closer. “That’s right, me. I have.”

“Hate to tell you this, but your grammar is really bad,” Dee says, because the only way to really tell how pissed off someone may be is to bother them just that little bit more.

“You know, most of the time it’s pretty hard to tell that you and Dennis are siblings,” the Waitress says, her words very slow and very deliberate and it’s almost laughably obvious how restrained they are. “But right now? Right now, you may as well be the same person.”

Dee, however, has to restrain from rolling her eyes. “Page –”

"It’s really telling that you only call me that when you want something from me," the Waitress cuts in. "Well, guess what, it’s not gonna work, you’re coming with me.”

“I’m wearing sweatpants,” Dee points out.

“Then I will lend you jeans,” the Waitress says firmly.

She stares impassively for several seconds and Dee does her best to match her eye-for-eye, but she is so damn tired, Bebe is becoming so damn wiggly and fussy without any new entertainment or anyone paying sufficient attention to her, and it takes two to have a satisfying mutual glare, so Dee gives in by rolling her eyes and focusing her attention back on her baby.

“I’m actually going to murder you one day,” the Waitress tells her as Dee scoops Bebe into the air. “I’m going to murder you and adopt your baby and raise her as my own.”

“Alright,” Dee says between pulling faces to make Bebe laugh, her chubby legs wiggling and kicking in the air.

“She’s going to be called Page Jr.”

“Are you a baby, are you a baby? Yes, you are; yes, you are,” Dee baby-talks, ignoring the Waitress completely because the absolute best way to not admit defeat is to pretend like you never cared in the first place.

The Waitress folds her arms, waiting for whatever else might follow with atypical patience and a typical glare. Dee pulls a face at her instead and she rolls her eyes. “Very funny. Now are you coming or what?”

*

Ideally, Dee sleeps naked. She’s not ashamed of it. There’s a certain freedom to it that she enjoys, sheets and skin and breeze – and, yes, a certain level of taboo. That’s part of the appeal. Ask her brother and he’ll say the exact same thing, if the urgent scramble he’d make every time she barged into his room without knocking when they were in their teens was any indication. Dee wooed many a man in college when her roommate wasn’t around with just her preferred nightwear: waiting for the next dick-on-legs to knock on her door so she could open it in nothing but a sheer robe so short that, if she bent over, you could practically see her ovaries. When her psychology professor came a-knocking, she didn’t bother with the robe at all.

Now, she doesn’t bother with all that nonsense – not that she’s had many gentleman callers since she hit her third trimester, yet another joy of single motherhood – especially because Dennis and Mac and Charlie make far too much of a habit of barging into her apartment at all hours of the night, but she did make an exception last summer. In those first few months post-delivery, that’s how they slept: Dee on her side, Bebe on her back, both dressed only in diapers so that they didn’t bleed or pee all over the bedsheets, respectively. They both upgraded to proper pajamas as Bebe experienced her first fall in Philadelphia, the thunderstorms brewing and the days turning grey, and Dee ended up in plenty of layers come winter because, damn, her bed is cold with the sheets taken off so she doesn’t accidentally suffocate her daughter in the middle of the night, but there wasn’t a moment where it didn’t feel right. Okay, there were moments when she hated it, when she when she stared at the ceiling so frustrated she thought her head might explode, but there wasn’t a moment where it felt like it was something she shouldn’t be doing.

Now, they create a circle of warmth around her, Bebe sleeping starfish in the center as they lie curled on their sides, facing in towards her, and it’s probably the weirdest thing they’ve ever done together. Dee does really have to think about that – they have done a lot of really weird things together and that’s not even including that one time a couple months ago when Dee just kind of chilled out in her apartment basically topless with pumps attached to her tits as the Waitress tried in vain to stop her baby from screaming the apartment down because apparently separation anxiety is now also a thing, go motherhood – but this is definitely in the top five.

One, Dee doesn’t exactly make a habit of bedsharing. Two – she definitely doesn’t make a habit of bedsharing in a bed that is not her bed. Three – okay, she has bundled up with the guys and some blankets on Charlie’s bed a couple times but that doesn’t count, okay? That’s them, it’s okay if it’s them, and that’s not really bedsharing. That’s napping in a dogpile. It’s not the same thing. Four – she’s never bedshared with someone else and her baby before. Five – she’s also shaking slightly, which isn’t anything serious, just her crack-deficient body making its displeasure known and also kind of handing her ass to her, so she does her best to squash it down. Six – she’s bedsharing with the _Waitress_. This is a whole new level of weirdness. This should feel like something she shouldn’t be doing but, hey, Dee never claimed to have good instincts, or any instincts at all, really. Agreeing to smoke with Roxy probably wasn’t that great of an instinct and leaping to call the cops was embarrassing even for her. Getting the guys to drag her out into the hallway and just kind of leave her there was a good idea, though, she’ll give herself that one. It was her who came up with that idea, right? It sounds like her. Yeah, it was probably her.

Dee glances over at the Waitress. She’s been remarkably tight-lipped about the whole crack thing, and the whole bedsharing thing, and the whole everything-about-this-weird-situation thing since they got back from the store armed with formula and a frosty, unspoken agreement to only bicker the minimal amount needed to get all three of them into bed without it escalating into a full-blown argument. That’s part of what’s making Dee feel so weird because she’s pretty sure she’s never tried to defuse anything in her entire life, literally or metaphorically. On that note, the Waitress is pretty tight-lipped now, literally instead of metaphorically; from what Dee can see of her dim and shadowed expression, her lips are pursed pretty tight together as she supposedly sleeps.

“Hey,” Dee whispers to her. She doesn’t respond but the air around her stills in a way that pretty much confirms her theory. “Hey, I didn’t finish my story.”

There are a few more seconds of silence – or, as much silence as there can be in an apartment with thin walls and a city at its doorstep, in a room with two women and a sleeping baby on one small, squeaky bed. Then there’s a sigh and, even without being able to properly see her, see her face and her large eyes, Dee knows exactly what exceedingly unimpressed expression she’s making.

“So what, Dee?” Her voice is very quiet.  “How could the rest of your story make any of this not a shit-show?”

Dee leans in a little closer. “Frank did manage to propose to the whore in the end.”

“Did he now,” the Waitress says, very clearly humoring her. “What did she say?”

“She didn’t say anything,” Dee tells her. “She collapsed and died on the floor cause she’d smoked too much crack.”

The Waitress sighs again, rolling onto her back, clearly having not got the moral of the story yet. “Yeah, I really don’t see how this is making anything better.”

Well, if she needs more of an explanation, she can get more of an explanation. “It means I have a really good reason to not smoke crack.”

She snorts. “Why, ‘cause you don’t want to become a whore and have Frank try and marry you?”

“Oh, no, we’ve already tried that,” Dee says flippantly. “The marrying Frank part, I mean, not the becoming a whore part. Not professionally, at least. No, what I was trying to say is that it made me realize that I don’t actually want to die cause of smoking too much crack – or for any reason, come to think of it, but especially cause of smoking too much crack.”

Bebe snuffles in her sleep. Fuck the internet, fuck the books, fuck all other moms sticking up their noses; Dee has always, always, since the moment the thing left her body, been a fan of the whole co-sleeping thing. First in a little cot next to Dee’s bed, so that she could still have sheets but have her close, have her near, and she would only need to reach out so far for feedings; at some point, Dee basically abandoned the cot and the sheets in favor of more sleep and her daughter snoozing next to her. Thank god Bebe’s already had a fair bit of practice sleeping in this bed, otherwise this could have been weirder than it already is. The Waitress wasn’t wrong, all those months ago, about her apartment being shit. With the temperature barely above freezing outside and no central heating inside, her breath steams before her when she needs to take a leak, but their combined body heat keeps Bebe snug as a bug in a rug between them even as Dee continues to shiver, covered in cold sweat as she is.

“Can you please shut up and let at least one of us sleep?” she says, in a tone that suggests she really doesn’t want to have this conversation right now.

“Oh, I’m sorry, are you finding it annoying that the person who you’ve made sleep in your bed has decided to talk to you?” Dee hisses, who definitely does want to have this conversation right now. “And aren’t you supposed to say something, like, supportive?”

“I’m not your sponsor, Dee,” she replies, almost patronizingly. “And, as I said before, I’m sure as hell not your friend.”

That reply would piss her off properly if she had any energy left inside her to be properly pissed off which, wow. Dee having no energy left inside her to be pissed off? The things that having a baby does to you. Well, the things that sleep deprivation does to you. Pot, kettle. No, her reply doesn’t make her feel angry, just unwanted and bitter; like all Dee’s providing this bed is warmth, that all she’s good for is making milk, that they’d both be so much better off without her and, honestly, _fuck_ that. She can provide so much goddamn more than just breastmilk and she knows it. The Waitress knows it. Bebe might not know it yet but that’s because she’s a baby and doesn’t know shit. Dee can stand not being wanted by the gang – hell, that’s how she’s felt her entire three and half decades of existence – but _fuck_ if she’s going to let that happen with her own damn baby.

The problem is that she doesn’t know how to express all that. All she can figure out how to say is, “At least tell me you don’t want me to die either.”

“Fine, Dee. I don’t want you to die either,” the Waitress says, voice practically dead itself at this point.

“Thanks, Page,” she says, dialing down the sarcasm as much as she can. “Means a lot. Sleep well, or whatever the hell it is people say.”

It takes a long while, and Dee is almost convinced she dreamt it, but Page finally replies, “You too, Dee.”


	15. The Gang Leaves Jersey Shore

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Six months without an update she comes back with a chapter.
> 
> Charlie POV. Warnings for implied drug use, unimplied alcohol use, sexism, bad parenting, and even worse babysitting, and other canon-typical awfulness.
> 
> Takes place directly after the events of S7E02, The Gang Goes to Jersey Shore.

“Okay, alright, everyone get in the car!”

“Go, let’s go! Give me my baby and get in the car!”

Dee comes hurtling out of the car like a mad thing, Dennis on her tail and eyes only for her baby. It’d probably be a lie to say that Charlie wasn’t the tiniest bit sad to be parting with her. It's not that he wants to be holding a baby the whole ride home but they did have a pretty nice time together here at the Jersey Shore. Mac keeps continuing on with his bullshit about the night he had and how much he loves the Shore blah blah blah, and Dennis and Dee are absolutely losing it over some lack of meaning to life and calling Mac a fat-ass, as they all get in the car. Even with Bebe bawling from the middle seats, her mother losing it in the front seat, and the realisation that he’s definitely going to be the primary baby-entertainer on the drive home after all, Charlie still thinks the Jersey Shore's pretty cool. He’s set on that, this magical, beautiful town –  Mac might think his tale was bullshit, but Bebe doesn’t. She was there. She may be a baby, but she was there.

“Hey, remember when I got given this last night?” he says, showing her the little green jewel. Bebe reaches for it instantly with her little fat fists, as she has done for every baby biscuit he’s passed her, but Charlie makes sure to pull it back in time. “Nuh-uh, not allowed to touch. You might hurt yourself.”

“Charlie, what are you giving my baby?” Dee’s panicked frenzy from before has abated, only to been replaced by the foulest mood he’s seen her in since God knows when.

“Oh, just a little something I got given on the beach last night,” Charlie boasts, leaning forward in his seat to show her it. It glints in the light refracting through the window screen as they drive down the 195 back to Philly, Bebe starting to fuss in the seat beside him.

Dee grabs his wrist, yanking it to get a better look at the jewel, then drops it in disgust. “Charlie, that’s a piece of a broken glass bottle, don’t give my baby _glass_.”

“Yeah, Charlie,” Mac says from the backseat as Charlie picks up a toy bunny on the floor of the car and passes it to Bebe. “That’s stupid, even for you.”

“I wasn’t going to give your baby glass, I was just showing it to her,” Charlie shoots back, Bebe waving the toy at Mac. “And like you can talk, Mac; all the stupid shit you’ve probably given her in the last ten months.”

“Why would she be interested in it, anyway?” Dee continues as Bebe throws the toy bunny at Mac. “I mean, besides the fact that she’s a baby and therefore goes nuts for anything shiny.”

Charlie cups the jewel in the palm of his hand, turning it over and over with his finger. “I mean, she was there. I don’t know how good the memories of babies are, but she seemed to recognise it.”

“Wait, how long were you on the beach with Bebe last night?” Mac says, passing the toy bunny back to Bebe. “I mean, she’s still alive, so good job on that front, I guess.”

“Oh, all night.” Maybe his wallet? He could put it in his wallet.

Dee twists in her seat, hair whipping with alarming speed and catching an unresponsive Dennis in the face. He hasn’t spoken at all since they left twenty minutes ago, fingers white on the steering wheel. “You were on the beach with my baby _all night_?”

“Yeah, I mean – she’s still alive, isn’t she?” Charlie points out, as Dee rants about all the things that could’ve potentially happened to her – up to and including drowning, being bitten by a rabid dog, and getting sunburnt – but didn’t happen to her so shut up, Dee. “So, nothing that bad could’ve happened.”

“Yeah, okay, but you said you spent the night with the Waitress,” Mac butts in, ignoring the toy being waved in his general direction. “So apparently anything could’ve happened.”

Dee reigns back her anger long enough to get out, “Did you just say the Waitress was there?”

Charlie hums an affirmative as he pockets the jewel again, and she almost melts back into her seat.

“Oh, thank God.” That doesn’t last long, though, because apparently she has more mood swings than her ten-month-old daughter. “Wait, you didn’t rape the Waitress in front of my baby, did you?”

Charlie can feel himself physically recoil at the idea: god, why does he hang out with these people? Christ. “No! Oh, my god, why does everyone think I must have raped her? Including her?”

“I mean, in our defence, you have been stalking her for a pretty long time,” Dennis says, finally snapping out of his reverie. None of them have asked what happened to them at the Jersey Shore – well, actually they all have, but none of them have gotten any more of an answer than Dee snapping that she did not want to talk about it, followed by baby-talking to her kid about how much she doesn’t want to talk about it, and Dennis upping the traumatised vibration he’s got going in the driver’s seat. So, it was probably pretty bad. “I am curious, Dee; why is the Waitress having been there such a good thing?”

“Well, I – I – I just, y’know, don’t think anything too bad could’ve happened to Bebe whilst she was there,” Dee replies, with more than just a bit of hesitation, as her daughter sticks the toy bunny in her mouth.

“Dee, it’s the Waitress,” Dennis says. “She’s as bad as half of the people at the Jersey Shore, and probably just as high.”

“Okay, yes, probably, but she’s only an alcoholic,” Dee says. “She wouldn’t have been _high_. She’s not a – a – smackhead or whatever, unlike pretty much everyone else at the Jersey Shore, and Charlie hadn’t had that much to drink, had you, Charlie? Charlie?”

Charlie raises his head from where he's been rummaging about the floor of the car; there’s gotta be a chew toy here _somewhere_. “Only about as much as I normally do.”

“See?” Dee’s hair jingles as she turns from one to the other. “Exactly. So, between the two of them, especially with the Waitress being there, they were more than capable than looking after a baby, so I’m really not freaking out. I’m not. I’m not, definitely not.”

“Still not explaining why the Waitress would be better at looking after Bebe than Charlie,” Dennis says as Charlie tempts Bebe with an unearthed chew toy. “She hasn’t even met the damn thing.”

Dee flounders. Bebe does not look impressed, still set on slobbering her toy bunny to death. “Mac, why would the Waitress be better at looking after a baby than Charlie?”

“Oh! Natural feminine urges,” Mac replies; Dennis snorts.

“Chuck it at Mac,” Charlie whispers to her, miming it as well just to give her a little push in that direction. “You wanna chuck it at Mac, I know you wanna chuck it at Mac, go on.”

“Thank you, Mac,” Dee says as her kid chucks the toy bunny at him. “Even after a couple drinks in her, I’m sure she was just fine. Way better at looking after a baby than Charlie.”

“I mean, I guess,” Charlie says, successfully handing Bebe the chew toy. He’s not exactly going to fault her logic: the Waitress did take to looking after Bebe like a duck to water. He can’t really remember the excuse she gave but it was something to do with being jealous of Dee for being a mom and having a purpose in life and being angry that she threw it away by smoking crack. “Come to think of it, she did say she was on ecstasy.”

There’s a second of split silence before Dee explodes, and he means _really_ explodes, with “Oh, _goddammit,_ page – of my book, I’m gonna give her a – a page of my book, a piece of my mind. Goddammit. I fucking hate the Jersey Shore – Dennis, pull over.”

“What?” Dennis splutters. “I’m not gonna do thats, are you kidding?”

“Are you deaf?” Dee snarls. “Pull over. I said, pull over.”

“I can’t pull over,” Dennis says. “We’re in the middle of a very busy highway!”

Dee’s nails dig deep into the leather of the seats, and Charlie turns to Frank to start betting on how quickly she’s going to tear it. “Uh, yeah, who gives a shit, pull over.”

“Do you want your baby to die, Dee?” Dennis replies. “Do you want me to pull over and immediately get us all killed by a lorry driving straight into us?”

“Uh, do you _want_ me to rip your head off in front of your niece?” Dee counters.

“Can we at least wait until we’re at a gas station,” Dennis says. “Can we at _least_ wait –”

“No, we can’t wait until we’re at a gas station, we need to pull over _now_ –”

“Oh, god, you’re not having another baby, are you?” Mac butts in, still holding the bunny-shaped projectile.

“No, I am not having another baby, Mac,” Dee snaps. Bebe pulls the chew toy out of her mouth with a less than happy expression. “Oh, goddammit, now the kid’s on the edge of a nervous breakdown. Great, that’s just great. Dennis, could you _please_ pull over?”

“There’s a gas station literally coming right up, I’m not pulling over,” Dennis says as Charlie frantically waves yet another toy in front of Bebe’s face in a futile attempt to get her to not start screaming; _God_ , Charlie hates being on babysitting duty.

She’s reached a tipping point by the time they finally, three more minutes of arguing later, pull into a space at the nearest gas station, and sent over the brink by her mother getting out of the car and not immediately coming to her rescue but instead immediately screaming into the ether. It’s feral and guttural and pretty childish but, oh, if it isn’t incredibly entertaining to watch. It would be slightly more entertaining if her daughter wasn’t also matching her volume to volume.

“Shotgun not having to deal with the kid,” Frank says as Dee kicks an empty beer can across the parking lot.

“Shotgun not me,” Mac adds as Dee stomps her feet on the ground.

“Shotgu –” Dennis and Charlie both yell.

Dennis turns to stare at him with a thunderous glare as Dee decides to add swearing to the mix – you know, for variety.

“Rock paper scissors?” Charlie suggests. Dennis makes a noise not unlike a growl and gets out the car, ignoring the screaming baby in favour of its mother.

“Already called shotgun,” Mac says, as Charlie back turns to them. Goddammit.

“You couldn’t pay me to look after the thing,” Frank adds. Assholes, absolute assholes.

“Alright, guess it’s just you and me, kid,” Charlie tells Bebe, who merely looks at him, takes a deep breath, and continues screaming. Fair enough. “Alright, come on, then.”

He’s taking her out of the car seat and into his arms when Mac says, “Hey, while you’re there, could you let us out?”

Charlie looks from Mac, to the seat, to the baby, and back to Mac. “Uh, kinda got my hands full right now, dude.”

“ _What_?”

“Oh, come on, Charlie,” Frank whines. “Just put the thing back in its little baby seat, let us out, and then you can deal with the screaming infant.”

“Nah, I’m not putting Bebe back in her seat,” Charlie says, grabbing the diaper bag and slinging that over his shoulder as she wiggles and reaches for her oblivious mom in his arms. “She’s been in there long enough already.”

“How’d you expect us to get out, then?” Mac asks.

Charlie shrugs. “You’re adults, you figure it out.”

He blithely ignores both their yells and the yells still coming from Dennis and Dee all the way into the gas station. Why should he help them out, hm? He was the one looking after Bebe all night. He was the one who missed out on all the amazing things that the Jersey Shore had to offer him had he not had a charge with him the entire time – although, to be fair, seeing the Waitress with Bebe was pretty incredible. How she held her, rocked her, loved her, eyes shining bright with joy and motherhood is stuck in a loop in his mind, set to remain a dream in there for a while. He’s definitely not regretting a second of that. But it should mean that he shouldn’t be the one having to look after her now. He’s not this thing’s dad, as far as he knows; he’s not this thing’s godfather, as Dee reluctantly named Mac after his whole trying-to-be-Bebe’s-dad plan fell through; and yet he, not Mac, not Frank, and definitely not Dee or Dennis, the two who are actually related to this thing by blood, is the one bouncing her up and down in his arms as he goes, muttering all the boring things you do to try and calm babies that generally work for shit.

There’s also a strong, familiar yet strangely ever-changing smell rising from her as she twists with displeasure and discomfort in his arms. He’s gotten way more used to changing Bebe – once he figured out the mechanics of diapers, changing her has become one of the most calming moments of Charlie Work whenever he's around her – but changing her in a public place that isn't the bar for the first time is sure to be interesting.

“Hey, you got somewhere I can change a baby?” he yells over Bebe’s screams to the girl reading a magazine behind the counter. “This baby, I mean, not just babies in general.”

The girl doesn’t look up, merely turns a page lazily. “Ladies at the back of the store.”

The ladies. Shit. He had not considered this. “Uh, got anywhere else I can change her?”

The girl looks up at him, unimpressed. She’s wearing green eyeshadow like Dee used to, super tacky, super weird, and quickly becoming super annoying. “Got a woman who change it for you?”

Through the large, grimy windows of the store, Dee’s skinny figure remains visible mid-scream. Charlie turns back to the till girl. “She’s not with us right now.”

The till girl pops her gum. “Only got changing tables in the ladies, I’m afraid.”

“Shit,” Charlie says, starting to struggle with the loud, wriggly baby in his arms and thinking fast. The till girl doesn’t even look back up from her magazine as he walks full speed in the general direction of the ladies. He passes no one in the store on the way – or, at least, no one who pays him any mind, only a couple of folks stuck drunk looking between various ridiculously overpriced items that they probably don’t actually need – but knocks loudly on the door to the ladies anyway.

“Uh, hey, ladies? Women? Anyone? Just in here to change a diaper, that cool?” he yells over Bebe’s impressive lung capacity.

No response. Probably fine, then. He lugs in the screaming baby and does a brief reconnoitre of the area before lugging her over to the changing table. It may be in a bit of a weird position behind the sinks but fortunately it’s just as vacant as the rest of the toilets are. Charlie loves practically-empty gas stations outside of the Philly area, he’s decided. In most circumstances, this’d be quick work; he hasn’t had quite as much experience at changing diapers as Dennis, and definitely not as much as Dee, but it’s almost impossible to gross him out, so. Even now, with this shit explosion dripping down her chubby legs, Charlie finds a whistle in him as he strips her of her bloomers, discarding them in the plastic bag already containing multiple other poop-encrusted outfits from this weekend.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know this sucks, I know you super hate being changed and even more when it’s by me,” he chats away, getting her out of the filthy bodysuit as well. “But it’ll suck a whole lot less once I’ve actually got you in new clothes. Man, you are really hating this today, aren’t you?  Is it the cold? ‘Cause, I gotta tell you, it is pretty chilly in here –” he grabs one of her little feet, her cold, little feet, and gives it a bit of a rub for warmth. “Hell yeah, it’s cold in here, I should have not taken your bodysuit off before I put another diaper on, huh.”

There’s laughter, and in bursts some lady with a bob and really, really badly applied foundation. Like, Charlie is friends with Dennis; he knows what well-applied foundation looks like and this lady is not wearing it. Nor is she wearing a smile anymore, instead a wrinkled nose like she’s just smelled something real bad – which is fair enough, Charlie reasons. She is in a public toilet containing a stinky baby. Her glance down at the still-mostly-naked Bebe then back at him before she swans past to the cubicle helps clear up things, though.

“Man,” he tells Bebe, as he gets her cleaned up and into a new bodysuit, “Some people, huh? Act like they’ve never seen a baby being changed before.”

A second woman walks in and almost steps right back out on seeing him. “Uh, what are you doing in here?”

Charlie gestures at – just, the whole thing. The bag of dirty clothes, the unfolded diaper, his hands which have way more shit on them then any hands should ever have: even his, which is really saying something. “What does it _look_ like?”

“Shouldn’t you be in the men’s?” she replies, clearly trying to be scathing but missing by a wide margin.

“Uh, there isn’t a changing table in men’s,” Charlie tells her. “I mean, if you wanna lie on the floor of men’s toilets, be my guest, but –”

That gets which gets her scurrying past him to the cubicles real quick.

“See what I mean?” he says to the still-crying Bebe as he finishes off, vaguely aware of the first woman leaving the stall to wash her hands. All he’s got left to do now is throw the diaper in the bin and –

Oh.

Charlie lifts the dirty diaper in the air. “Uh, could you move? I kind of need to throw this away, trash can’s just behind you.”

The woman glances his way, not even moving her stupid mascara brush from her face. “Sorry?”

“I need to throw this diaper away and the trash can is behind you,” Charlie says, a fair bit louder this time. “And I really don’t wanna move from here in case she falls off - she’s kind of at that age when she seems constantly set on trying to kill herself in some way or another - so, if you could move, that’d be great.”

The woman just raises her eyebrows and turns her gaze back to her stupid reflection in the mirror. Fine. _Fine_. Only one thing for it, then.

Charlie throws the diaper at the trash can, and it lands square in the face of the second woman as she leaves her cubicle.

“Oh, shit,” he manages to say before all hell breaks loose.

He has about a second before the second woman opens her shit-stained mouth and starts screaming, and Charlie has gathered up a moderately cleaner Bebe in his arms, slung the diaper bag back over his shoulder, and gotten the hell out of Dodge in half that time.

As he bursts out the door, a man waiting outside loudly exclaims, “You sick bastard!”

“Really helping, thanks, asshole!” Charlie yells back as he waddles as quickly as he can towards the exit and away from the continued shrieking from the toilets. The girl is calling after him as well, now, scrambling away from her till point as the first woman storms out, but Charlie wouldn’t stop for a hurricane at this point. Thank fuck Bebe seems to think the added screaming is funny and is now making weird yelling in delight instead of in misery. She’s bouncing up and down in his arms once again as his own little legs speed-walk to the car, waving her fat arms at her uncle leaning out of the driver’s side.

“Charlie, what the hell is going on?” Dennis says, Dee sitting beside him with her eyes closed, her head back against the seat, and her hair an absolute mess.  “We’ve been waiting here forever.”

“Yeah, and why is there so much screaming?” Mac adds, having seemingly not moved from the back seat as Charlie starts trying to wrestle a screaming-with-misery-again-oh-my- _God_ baby back into her car seat again. “From people other than Bebe, I mean.”

“Yes, I know you hate your car seat, yes, I know, the car seat really sucks, doesn’t it,” he repeats, practically on auto-pilot, as he double-checks the buckles. Fortunately, Dee gets her shit together enough to attempt being a mom and half-heartedly waggles her hand at her daughter to at least try and distract her. “Oh, I went into the ladies to change Bebe ‘cause they didn’t have any tables in the men’s and I may have thrown a diaper at a woman’s face.”

“You went in the ladies?” Dennis says. “ _Nice_.”

“Wait, you threw a diaper at a woman’s face?” Mac says.

“Yeah, it was a pretty shitty one, too,” Charlie tells him, now clambering into his seat the other side. “But she was being a bitch about me changing Bebe in the women’s, so.”

“So, you threw a diaper at her.” Dee’s attempts to distract her daughter with a toy failed miserably, so she hands it to Charlie instead. “ _Nice_. I might borrow that one.”

“Yes, and now we need to go,” Charlie says, voice getting progressively louder along with Bebe’s. There doesn’t seem to be anyone leaving the store in their general direction yet, but he can see the women in the toilets talking with the girl at the till and not seeming all too happy about it. “Before security decides to come out here and bust my ass!”

“Relax, dude, you’ll be fine,” Dennis pshaws. “It’s 2011. We’ll just say something about feminism and they’ll be chill with it. They’ll have to be, or I’ll have a few words to say about them not having any changing tables in the men’s.”

“Uh, why would they have changing tables in the men’s?” Mac butts in.

“Yeah, that’s a woman’s job,” Frank adds.

“Unbelievable,” the twins both say, and turn to glare at each other.

“Look, can we please just go?” Dee tells him, shaking a baby bottle Charlie can’t quite recognise in her hand. “Hopefully the motion of the car will shut her up. Charlie, hand me the diaper bag.”

“Yeah, if you do us a favour and get her to knock it off, that’d be great,” Frank says as Charlie hands her the bag.

“I’m getting on it,” Dee snaps, rummaging in the bag and pulling out another bottle and sanitizing wipes.

“Look, just –” Dennis fiddles on his phone for a second before handing it to Charlie. “If you could just stick this in front of her face, hopefully that’ll distract her for a bit.”

Charlie does as told, sticking the video of an old lady dressed in black in front of Bebe. She pays it no mind until he figures out how to turn up the volume and said old lady starts singing, at which point they’re both hooked. Bebe is still crying a bit, pink face even pinker than normal, but nothing nearly like the earth-shattering screams of before.

“God, this stuff is expensive,” Dee mutters as she pours the stuff from one bottle into another bottle. The song and dance have something to do with bananas, it’s pretty great.

“Do you want me to wait until you’re finished with…” Dennis waves a hand at her whole situation. “All that?”

“Dennis, I’ve been a mom for, like, nine months –”

“ _Ten_ months.”

“Exactly, you think I can’t handle a bit of bottle-making in a moving car?” she scoffs as the woman moves onto farming the corn. “Charlie. _Charlie_.”

Charlie looks up from the video as Dennis gets the car going. “Huh?”

Dee waves the bottle in his face, her own stormy and make-up smeared. “Could you give this to Bebe?”

“Oh, right, yeah.” Charlie gives the bottle to Bebe which shuts her up real quick.

“Wait, Dee,” Mac says, craning his neck as far up as he can. Okay, Bebe misses her mouth the first time, but his point still stands. “Are you feeding your baby _formula_?”

“Yes, I am feeding my baby formula and, before you start bitching at me about breast being best and all that,” she says, upping the volume over his complaints as Bebe misses her mouth again. “Dennis and I may have accidentally smoked a bit of PCP last night and so formula it is.”

“Dee!” Mac explodes. Fortunately, Bebe has managed to get the bottle in her face and her focus is split entirely between the bottle and the woman now singing about doing the tango, so she doesn’t start up again. Charlie isn’t sure how doing the tango is related to peeling mangoes, but he’s learnt not to question kids’ videos all that much. “You can’t smoke PCP when you have a baby!”

“Uh, well, I did, so what’re you gonna do about it?” Dee shoots back. Charlie still isn’t sure whether the old lady is singing _form_ or _farm_ the orange, which, really. She should be clearer. If he can’t understand it, Bebe definitely won’t.

“I don’t know, shame you for the rest of eternity?” Mac says.

“I thought that was gonna happen when I die?” Dee replies. Bebe doesn’t seem to care about the uncertainty, though, her wide eyes fixed to the screen. They’ve started to get a bit greener over the last few months than the blue she was born with which is cute. “So why do you need to do it?”

“Well, yeah, but –”

“Shut up!” Dennis explodes. “Shut up, shut up, shut up! Can everyone just please, _please_ shut up? For one second? And let me focus on driving instead of your inane squabbling?”

There’s silence for about two seconds before Dee, Dennis, Mac, and Frank all explode into yelling at each other as the lady starts singing about guacamole and Charlie and Bebe don’t pay them an iota of attention. The arguments rise and die and rise and die and rise and die the rest of the hour back to Philly, including one particularly spiteful one between Dennis and Dee: the former wanting Bebe to watch these kid’s videos he’s able to bring up on his phone so that’ll she’ll stay quiet and also get smarter from the more educational ones but not wanting to drain his battery and his data, the latter not wanting Bebe to grow dull and desensitized to these stupid videos and insisting that just because Dennis pays for her data doesn’t mean he gets to dictate how she uses her data. Of course, that leaves Charlie being the one to try quell any tantrums when the phone gets taken away and, good God, is he sick to death of that toy bunny, but whatever. It’s fine. At least he’s not spending any more time trying to stop her from eating sand.

When Dennis starts turning into more familiar streets, Mac and Charlie pointing out various landmarks, both important historically and personally to the gang, Dee starts directing Dennis to a different part of the city, heading slightly further west before he hits Broad Street and pulling up near a sandwich place he sometimes goes to when checking in on the Waitress.

“Look, I just want to grab a sandwich, can I grab a fucking sandwich?”

“Of course, you can grab a sandwich, I just don’t see why you can’t grab us all sandwiches and I can drive you back home, where you can actually take care of your baby instead of –”

“Hey, Charlie,” Dee says, completely ignoring her brother. “Would you be able to take Bebe back up to my place for me? Just lay her down, give her some more formula, there’s probably some more food in there she can have, all that shit?”

“Yeah, sure,” he replies, and she immediately starts unbuckling and clambering out her side of the car as Dennis continues arguing with her. “Any reason why, you need to go buy more formula or something?”

“I need to go yell at someone.”

Dee leans over the front seat to ruffle her daughter’s hair before slamming the door shut and storming off without a second glance. It only made Bebe’s blonde hair even fluffier, sticking out in every which direction. Dennis makes a strangled noise and gives the wheel a solid whack before pulling back out into the road, and Charlie glances around the car to see if anyone else knows what the hell is going on with her.

“I know, women, right?” Mac scoffs at his look. “Hey, you wanna go back to the bar and build an obstacle course for Bebe?”

“Oh, fuck yes,” Charlie says. “I will have to go and get some food for her first, though.”

“Okay, fine, but you better be quick about it,” Frank says. “I have no space to stretch here.”

“Oh, you have no space, Frank? _You_ have no space?” Mac begins yelling and the car once again erupts into arguments as Bebe decides, once again, to voice her displeasure at her mother disappearing from her sight once again.

The whole obstacle course ends up falling through once Dennis realises first that his precious car has a hell of a lot of sand in it, and second that his far-less-precious niece has a hell of a lot of sand on her. That kind of explains the constant crying, though. Even with the diaper change, Charlie wouldn’t fancy having his bits coated in sand and not being able to do anything about it. Dennis ends up hauling ass back to Dee’s apartment so he can feed her and bathe her and not have a hissy fit at Mac, who hauls his fat ass to the nearest hamburger store after having been complaining about how hungry he was for most of the drive back. Frank waddles off to god knows where, and Charlie finds himself back at the bar, alone, baby-free for the first time in 24-hours, and thinking of the Waitress.

Charlie is sweeping when Dee gets back. Like, he probably doesn't need to, he did give the floor a once-over before Mac knocked him out to go to Jersey Shore, but you can never be too sure with rats. This time last year he wouldn't have given a flying fuck if there was, like, a teeny-weeny bit of rat shit on the floor of the bar, so long as he'd bashed the majority good and dead, but Bebe spends more time crawling around on the floor of the bar than health inspectors, family doctors, and child protective services would deem advisory. So, another sweep it is.  
  
It's like she always finds the filthiest corners to toddle away into. It's insane. Charlie could sniff a shit ton of glue and go to town on the bar, give the place a balls-deep clean, and she would still find something. It comes in kind of handy, actually. Charlie always knows what and where needs a bit of a scrub down because she'll head right for it like a rat to cheese. The expression was a little more accurate when she was still crawling, but now she's begun toddling? Hoo-boy. Somehow everything to do with Bebe being in the bar has been lumped in with the rest of the Charlie Work, so those were a nice couple of mornings he spent crawling around, covering open sockets, putting latches on a fuckton of cupboards, and minimising just how much stuff could easily topple on her fat head until he was 99% sure that Bebe wasn’t going to accidentally kill herself.  
  
Her toddling may be cute but, goddamn, if it isn't annoying. On the beach, though, it was pretty adorable. Kid could not figure out how to walk on sand for the life of her. The Waitress did try pretty hard to walk her through it, quite literally, but in the end her butt ended up firmly on the sand, Bebe having decided she preferred eating it to walking on it. Smart kid.  
  
God.  
  
The Waitress.  
  
That's the real reason Charlie doesn't want to go home. He's scared going back to his apartment will make it feel less real, that it didn't actually happen; him, his love, and their baby on the beach, sleeping under the stars.  
  
Okay, so Bebe isn't his baby, and the Waitress is definitely not her mom - but, God, how she doted over Bebe, she was as good as. Charlie can pretend. There's no shame in imagination.  
  
"Oh, hey, Dee - "  
  
"Shut up, Charlie."  
  
She doesn't storm in. That kind of suggests that, like, she's angry and all over the place. No, all the anger's gone; it's very direct, like she knows what she wants and she's not going waste any time getting it. Whatever it’d be. Charlie decides that staying the fuck out of of it is probably wise. 'It' turns out to be a bottle of tequila she unearths from behind the counter which she opens and drinks like a dying man.  
  
Charlie decides that staying the fuck out of it is also kind of boring. "I thought you still weren't drinking?"  
  
"I've only had four beers and half a bottle of wine,” Dee manages to get out between chugs. "Oh, that hurts so good."  
  
Charlie leans on his broom again until she yanks the bottle from her mouth with an obscene pop. "You manage to yell at whoever you needed to yell at?"  
  
"Oh, yeah. Ohhh, yeah." Dee smacks her lips loudly, tequila dripping down her chin. If she’d looked a mess before, it’s absolutely nothing compared to now. Like old times, she’s a mess due to booze and bad decisions instead of breastmilk and baby vomit, almost a welcome sight. "I yelled at them real good."  
  
"Who was it?"  
  
Dee waves a hand at him, dismissing the question, and burps loudly. "Doesn't matter, wanna do shots?"  
  
Oh, those sweet, sweet words. Those sweet words he hasn’t heard from her in so long. "There she is! There's the Sweet Dee we all know and love. Where've you been, man? I've been looking all over for you."  
  
Her face twists, ugly. "Alright, fine, if you don't wanna - "  
  
"Oh, no, absolutely I do." Charlie lets his broom drop to the floor with a clatter and comes up to the bar as Dee ducks beneath again to retrieve glasses, lemon, salt. "So, remind me how to do this again."

Dee stands up straight, sending him an unimpressed look from over the bottle.  
  
"What? It's been so long since I've done this with you," Charlie points out. "Feels like you're a whole different person when you don't drink."

 "Oh, yeah, I am," Dee says, pouring out the shots, then having another swig from the bottle for good measure. "A boring one, and it sucks. Alright, on the count of three. One, two - "  
  
Charlie slams it before she can even start saying three. Dee swears before she follows soon behind; it barely registers in his throat but it does, hilariously, register in hers.  
  
"See, that's what happens when you don't drink for - " Charlie falters as Dee coughs over her lemon slice. "How many months has it been?"  
  
Dee's face twists over either the lemon or the question, he isn't sure which, as she pours out two more shots. "Well, Bebe is about ten months now, and I stopped at about three, maybe four months in, probably closer to three, so about a year."  
  
Charlie whistles. "Jesus."  
  
"I know, right?" Dee says. "I don't think I've abstained for that long since the last time - "  
  
She cuts herself off abruptly, which is a bit weird, and downs another shot. Charlie watches her face for another second but she’s mostly wincing from another slice of lemon. He dismisses it and downs his own.  
  
"Wait, weren't you in a loony bin for a while?" Charlie asks after they slam down their glasses once again. "They don't let you drink in those places, right?"  
  
Dee snorts. "Are you kidding me? Course they don't. The things I do for motherhood - or, well, " some of the tequila slops out of the bottle as she loosely waves it. "I did."  
  
"Yeah, I was wondering about that," Charlie replies as she begins measuring out two more shots, even more slopping out onto the bar. "I thought you'd pretty much abstained."  
  
"Well, I'd already smoked crack and PCP," Dee says drily. "And I'm already fucking up my kid's life by even letting her exist in world in the first place so, eh, what's a couple drinks gonna do."  
  
"I'll drink to that," Charlie says; Dee gives him a grin, toothy and wide in a way he hasn't seen in months - hasn't seen in over a year, in fact - as they clink glasses. "I'm surprised whoever you were yelling at boozed you up so much."  
  
Dee snorts. "Oh, yeah, like pay - "

She cuts herself off once again but, this time, she doesn't slam another; the fresh shot hovers in the air, tequila spilling over the sides onto the bar and down her long fingers.  
  
Charlie blinks. "Pay?"  
  
"Pay a babysitter enough and she'll give you whatever you want," Dee says after a moment, an odd note in her voice, although that might just be the alcohol.  
  
His eyes widen. "Holy shit, you have sex with your babysitter?"  
  
Dee slams the shot back on the counter. "No, I don't have sex with - Jesus _Christ_ , Charlie."  
  
"I'm just asking!" Charlie sweeps in and downs her shot - no point in letting good alcohol go to waste - and Dee splutters even more. "What? You pushed it towards me, I presumed - "  
  
"Just because I didn't want it doesn't mean that you can have it!”

 “Whatever, dude, you're barely holding your own anyway,” Charlie says, venom in his voice as well now. “You may as well give me the bottle, you're such a lightweight.”  
  
Dee’s response to that is to drink straight from it again: without breaking eye contact, and without a wince.  
  
They stare at each other for several long seconds. 

"Bet I can still down more than you without throwing up,” Charlie says. 

Dee's lip curls and she pours out two more shots, salt and lemon lying forgotten.

***

 _Ding-dong. Ding-dong. Ding-dong._  
  
"Way back inna winner of fifty-two, we didn' have fanshy gadgets like no ansherin' machine. You jusht had to call and call until shummbody got home. Now, shum people, dey shay dey don' like 'em, but I shay it'll shave you a lotta trouble if you jusht leave a meshage. Thanksh a lot."  
  
"Hey, Dee, this is Dennis; you know, the man who is looking after your baby for absolutely nothing. Call me back when you get this, okay?"  
  
_Ding-dong. Ding-dong. Ding-dong._  
  
"Way back inna winner of fifty-two, we didn' have fanshy gadgets like no ansherin' machine. You jusht had to call and call until shummbody got home. Now, shum people, dey shay dey don' like 'em, but I shay it'll shave you a lotta trouble if you jusht leave a meshage. Thanksh a lot."  
  
"Dee? Dee! Dee, could you pick up the damn phone? I think your baby's possessed by a demon, I really think she is, cause I tell you she will not stop screaming. Call me back."  
  
_Ding-dong. Ding-dong. Ding-dong._  
  
"Way back inna winner of -"  
  
"What?" he hears Dee snap. Charlie lifts his pounding head from the table - oh, so they migrated to one of the booths, not sure when that happened but okay, cool - only for the cell to be shoved in his face. "Could you take this, thanks."  
  
She drops her head back on the table with another moan as soon as he brings the cell to his ear.  
  
" - been calling for the last twenty minutes, your hellspawn will not stop crying and - "  
  
"Dennis, Dennis," Charlie says, pressing his fingers over his eyes as Dennis continues ranting. "I get that you're angry but could you speak just, like, a _bit_ quieter please?"  
  
"Wait, why?" Dennis says. "Oh, God, you two got blitzed, didn't you? Don't answer that. How much as she drunk?"  
  
Charlie glances around the bar and the mess they've left in their wake. "Uh, about a lemon's worth."  
  
"A lemon's worth? What the hell is that supposed to mean? Doesn't matter," Dennis snaps. "Look, is she in any way fit to be looking after a baby?"  
  
Charlie covers the cell with a hand. "Hey, Dee, Dennis wants to know if you're fit to look after a baby."  
  
"Tell Dennis he can go to hell," Dee tells the table.  
  
"She says you can go to Hell," Charlie tells him.  
  
"Great, that's great, that's just -" Dennis makes a strangled noise. "Okay, what are we gonna do? I can't leave to go run the bar cause I don't trust Mac alone with a baby, I can't let Mac leave cause I don't trust him to run the bar alone, and we can't leave a baby here alone."  
  
"I mean, I'm still here - ”  
  
Dennis snorts. "Yeah, like you and Mac can run the place without me."  
  
"And Dee, technically," Charlie adds. Dee groans, face smushed into the table, braids lying damp and half-ragged on the tequila-soaked table. "Although, I’m pretty sure she’s probably not up to that, either.”

"Eh, just stick her in a taxi, I'm sure she'll be fine,'" Dennis says. "Wait, you're on her phone, right? Why don't you see if you can call the Babysitter, see if she can come sit on the baby for us?"  
  
"Oh, shit, that's a good idea," Charlie says. "Wait a second, let me call you back."  
  
He hangs up on Dennis and somehow manages to figure out where Dee keeps her contacts. Well, he finds the bit marked "Regent" which is probably recent, but close enough. The first word on the list is _the_ followed by a long word with two B's in it, so probably Babysitter, right? Right, except that Charlie calls the number three times and she refuses to pick the damn cell up. He calls Dennis back.  
  
"She not available?"  
  
"I tried, man, but the Babysitter's just not picking up.”

Dee's head shoots up from the table. "Wait, are you calling the Babysitter?"  
  
Charlie nods, and Dee snatches the cell off him. "Hey!"  
  
"You are not calling the Babysitter," Dee snaps at him; then, sweet and sarcastic, down the line, "Hey, Den, you wouldn't mind looking after Bebe for the night, would you? It's just I _really_ don't think it's a good idea for me to being looking after her - "  
  
She yanks the cell away from her ear: even Charlie can hear his yelling through the thing.

“Alright, alright, alright,” she ends up screeching down the phone after a few seconds of interrupted yelling. “Okay, thanks, bye.”

Dee hangs up the phone and drops it on the table where it lands with a metallic clatter. Then she puts her hand in her hands with another moan, gripping her hair so tight her fingers go white, her shoulders shaking. Charlie is starting to get bored when she finally lifts her head a few seconds later, her face pale as well, either sweat or tequila dripping down her eyebrows.

“Hey, Charlie, do you think I'm a bad mom?" she asks, voice quivering.

“Yeah, no shit,” Charlie says, watching her shudder, fingers trembling, when something occurs to him. “Hey, are any of us gonna ever actually meet this Babysitter?”

Dee gives him one look and promptly vomits on the floor.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote 99% of this chapter back in September/October, I just dilly dallied with posting it for months.


End file.
